r/automation: rules, karma requirements and posting culture
A 235,000 member subreddit on workflow automation, from n8n and Zapier builds to AI agents. Gated by a 100 karma minimum, and around 4 in 10 posts are removed.
ChatGPT, Artificial Intelligence and Automation · Open on Reddit
- Members
- 236k
- Created
- 2009
- New posts a day
- 15
- Comments on a typical post
- 11
- New posts removed
- 41%
The short answer
r/automation removes posts from accounts with less than 100 total karma, and also removes posts from accounts it considers too new, without saying how new. About 4 in 10 recent posts were removed, most of them by the subreddit's own moderation and not by Reddit's filters. There is no flair, links are allowed, and the self-promotion rule is looser than most: blogs and tools are fine if they offer something and you keep to a 9:1 ratio. Referral or affiliate links get you banned.
Who posts here
Posts assume you know what a webhook, an API and a workflow tool like n8n or Zapier are. The better comments discuss retries, duplicate side effects and who fixes things when a client's system changes. Beginner questions about where to start do get posted, but several were among the removed posts. That is probably the karma gate catching new accounts, since no rule bans them.
- Freelancers and small agencies building automations for clients.
- Operations, IT and people-ops staff automating internal work.
- Developers who script things in Python and weigh that against no-code tools.
- Tool founders and vendors, some disclosed and some not.
- Hobbyists automating things at home.
Karma and account requirements
What it takes to get a post through in r/automation.
| Karma | 100 total karma. Below that, AutoModerator removes the post.Mods' wording: “your account has less than 100 total karma” |
|---|---|
| Account age | A minimum exists, but the number is not published.Mods' wording: “Your post has been removed due to account age.” |
| Post flair | None. No post in our sample had one. |
| Self-promotion ratio | Blogs and promotional posts are allowed if they are not clearly spam and offer something to the subreddit. Keep to nine other contributions for each promotional one.Mods' wording: “make sure you follow the 9:1 rule” |
| Links | Allowed. About a fifth of posts are link posts. No referral or affiliate links, and URL shorteners are blocked.Mods' wording: “Part of this rule will include blocking URL shorteners.” |
What AutoModerator says
The moderators' bot leaves these messages on posts. They are the closest thing to an official statement of the thresholds.
Your post was removed because your account has less than 100 total karma. Please gain more karma before posting here.
Thank you for your post to /r/automation! New here? Please take a moment to read our rules, read them here. This is an automated action so if you need anything, please Message the Mods with your request for assistance. Lastly, enjoy your stay!
Your post has been removed due to account age. This is protection from spam and trolls. Please be patient and earn some karma before you can post.
What you can post
| Post type | Subreddit setting | Share of recent posts |
|---|---|---|
| Text | Allowed | 67% |
| Link | Allowed | 22% |
| Image | Allowed | 10% |
| Video | Not allowed | 2% |
| Poll | Allowed | 0% |
What happens to a new post
Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 300.
- Stayed up57%
- Removed by Reddit's filters11%
- Removed by moderators30%
- Deleted by the author2%
Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.
What happened when we posted here
We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.
- Stayed up
- 99%
- Removed by Reddit's filters
- 1%
- Removed by moderators
- 0%
- Period
- August 2025 to August 2026
The rules, in the mods' words
- 1
Be nice to one another.
Breach of our be nice rule. Please take a minute to read the reddiquette. https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439
- 2
Blogspam & Self Promotion
You are allowed to post blogs and self promotional material provided it is not clearly spam and offers something to the sub. Please consider the spam rules on reddit when posting and make sure you follow the 9:1 rule. https://www.reddit.com/wiki/selfpromotion
- 3
No referral/affiliate-links.
We're not here to generate money for you. This will be an immediate ban, no questions asked. Part of this rule will include blocking URL shorteners.
These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.
The culture
r/automation was created in 2009, long before the AI boom, and now sits between workflow tooling and AI agents. It sees about 15 posts a day, two thirds of them text. The usual post is a practitioner describing a build or asking how others handle a problem: chasing unpaid invoices without a paid tool, an onboarding checklist that sent a new hire the wrong plan, a database step that failed while the run showed success.
The best performing recent thread asked for the craziest business automations people had come across. Skeptical takes do well too, such as the claim that AI agencies sell prompt wrappers that break within months, or that most client automations fail before anything is built. Comments are long, around 50 words, and practical.
The fault line is between people who do the work and people who sell the dream. Income screenshots, cold outreach success stories and model hype videos sit in the same feed as careful debugging notes, and the careful notes get the better replies. Moderation is a sore point as well: one poster said a submission filter blocked a detailed technical write-up, so they posted a screenshot of it instead.
What lands
- Open questions that invite stories, like the strangest automation people have seen in a business.
- Specific failure reports with the cause found, such as a workflow that reported success while a step had failed.
- Blunt opinions on the automation agency business, argued from experience.
- Cost and stack comparisons with real figures, for example monthly no-code fees against a coded build on cheap hosting.
What gets removed or ignored
- Posts from accounts under 100 total karma. This was by far the most common AutoModerator message.
- Posts from accounts judged too new.
- Surveys and thesis recruitment.
- A number of AI build showcases and agency pitches. Similar posts stayed up, so the account gate may be the real cause.
- Ordinary help requests were removed too, which again points to the karma gate, not the content.
The unwritten rules
- Build karma elsewhere first. 100 total karma is a hard gate and it catches honest questions.
- Disclose if you work for a tool you mention. Posters who said so up front were treated as credible.
- Comments rarely contain links, under 1 in 25. Naming your own product at the end of a helpful reply is common, and noticed.
- Give numbers: runs per day, monthly cost, hours saved. Vague claims get questioned.
Self-promotion
The rule here is more permissive than in most technical subreddits. You may post blogs and self-promotional material if it is not clearly spam and offers something to the subreddit, and you are asked to follow the 9:1 rule. Referral and affiliate links are an immediate ban, and URL shorteners are blocked. In practice product mentions are everywhere, in posts and at the end of comments, and plenty stay up. What gets removed is harder to read from outside, because about 30% of posts are taken down by the moderation side and the karma gate accounts for a lot of that.
How people write here
- Typical post length
- 143 words
- Typical title length
- 11 words
- Titles phrased as a question
- 37%
- Typical comment length
- 44 words
- Comments that include a link
- 1%
When people post
- 0:00 UTC, 10
- 1:00 UTC, 7
- 2:00 UTC, 5
- 3:00 UTC, 6
- 4:00 UTC, 9
- 5:00 UTC, 12
- 6:00 UTC, 13
- 7:00 UTC, 10
- 8:00 UTC, 10
- 9:00 UTC, 13
- 10:00 UTC, 13
- 11:00 UTC, 14
- 12:00 UTC, 15
- 13:00 UTC, 24
- 14:00 UTC, 19
- 15:00 UTC, 16
- 16:00 UTC, 18
- 17:00 UTC, 15
- 18:00 UTC, 12
- 19:00 UTC, 14
- 20:00 UTC, 7
- 21:00 UTC, 16
- 22:00 UTC, 11
- 23:00 UTC, 11
New posts by hour of day, UTC.
Top keywords
The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/automation.
- automation 86 posts
- automate 33 posts
- automations 24 posts
- automated 28 posts
- n8n 19 posts
- workflow 31 posts
- script 22 posts
- automating 17 posts
- workflows 22 posts
- automation tool 9 posts
- tool 29 posts
- agent 27 posts
- zapier 8 posts
- data 31 posts
- agents 20 posts
- failed 12 posts
- humanswith.ai 3 posts
- client 17 posts
- ai automation 8 posts
- task 14 posts
- python 10 posts
- manual 11 posts
- ai agent 10 posts
- repetitive 8 posts
- changes 15 posts
- fails 8 posts
- messages 10 posts
- stops 8 posts
- ai agents 10 posts
- uipath 3 posts
- system 19 posts
- silent 6 posts
- ai assistant 6 posts
- calls 13 posts
- fields 7 posts
- manually 11 posts
- automation agency 4 posts
- clean 13 posts
- slack 7 posts
- process 18 posts
Recurring topics: automation, n8n, workflow, ai, automate, looking for, agent, email, website, business.
Growth
- 2012110
- 2013320
- 2014720
- 20151.3k
- 20161.5k
- 20172.1k
- 20208.2k
- 202320k
- 202426k
- 2025169k
- 2026236k
Related subreddits
- r/AiAutomations
- r/SaaS
- r/aiagents
- r/n8n
- r/Automate
- r/coding
- r/devops
- r/AI_Agents
- r/MarketingAutomation
- r/Python
Common questions
How much karma do you need to post in r/automation?
100 total karma. AutoModerator removes posts from accounts below that and tells them to gain more karma first. There is also an account age check with no published number, so a new account can be removed even with enough karma.
Can I promote my automation tool in r/automation?
Yes, within the 9:1 rule. The rules allow blogs and self-promotional material as long as it is not clearly spam and offers something to the subreddit. Do not use referral or affiliate links, which bring an immediate ban, or URL shorteners, which are blocked.
Why was my r/automation post removed?
The most likely reason is the karma gate: under 100 total karma, or an account that is too new. About 30% of posts in our sample were removed by the subreddit's moderation and another 11% by Reddit's filters. If you clear the karma bar, check for referral links and shortened URLs.
What does r/automation talk about?
Workflow automation in practice. Common topics are n8n and Zapier builds, AI agents, scraping, client work for automation agencies, and choosing between no-code tools and writing code. The subreddit's title also names ChatGPT and AI, and news about models and robots shows up alongside the how-to threads.
Data as of October 4, 2026. Numbers come from public Reddit data (the Arctic Shift archive and GummySearch) sampled on this date. Removal share counts posts taken down by moderators, AutoModerator or Reddit's own filters. Banner and icon belong to the community. Moderators change rules without notice, so treat the sidebar as the final word.
