Keeping the shortlist of forums
Your category gets discussed in earnest on maybe three or four forums. You find them, learn which categories on each one carry the real questions, and check them on a rhythm you can hold week after week.
On Discourse
Discourse forum automation scoped to one forum at a time
Discourse is per-forum by design. An administrator issues an API key for the forum you take part in, and FounderReply can act only there — there is no cross-forum discovery. It drafts topics, replies and private messages, and every one of them waits in the approval queue.
- Acts on the Discourse account you already own — connected with Per-forum API key, and revocable by you without touching us.
- Finds the Discourse threads where you are a genuine answer, and brings the parent in with the draft so you approve a reply in context.
- Every draft lands in one queue. What leaves it unattended is whatever you set, per action, and it starts where Discourse’s own rules put it.
Drafted
On Discourse
What you're already doing on Discourse forums
Forum work is slow, and most of it is reading. You keep a short list of the communities where your category genuinely comes up, you read the topics properly, and you write the answer the question deserves.
Answering the question properly
Someone describes their setup and asks what to do. You read the whole topic, work out what they actually hit, and write an answer that stands on its own — with your affiliation said out loud in the reply.
Staying long enough to be a regular
Forums promote the people who keep showing up. You reply on other people’s topics, answer things outside your own lane, and let a trust level build until the regulars know your username on sight.
Discourse, as it looks
Every Discourse surface, working
The thread, the reply and the message — drawn as Discourse draws them, with the agent's draft arriving in each one. What you see here is what lands in your approval queue.
Watching
The topic list
The categories you actually read
A forum category listing its topics: the coloured category square, who is in each thread, and the replies, views and activity columns down the right. This is where the work starts.
Posted
In the thread
A reply that quotes what it answers
Discourse quotes the post you are answering, with its left rule and the poster above it. The composer sits docked below, and the reply lands in the thread when you release it.
Sent
Personal message
A private message on the same account
Discourse messages are topics with a guest list: an envelope on the title, the participants named at the top, and the posts in order. The same forum account, the same approval.
The case
Why founders need to be on Discourse forums
A Discourse forum is a public archive with a search box attached. Every topic you answer stays open, stays indexed, and keeps being read by the next person with the same problem. Forums reward the founder who treats them as a place rather than a channel.
Topics rank for years
One answer keeps arriving
A forum topic is a public page. Search engines index it, the forum’s own search surfaces it, and people land on it long after the last reply. The answer you write this week keeps introducing you once the conversation itself has gone quiet.
The real evaluators
Where your category is compared in detail
Forums are where the people who will actually run your product compare the options at length — configuration, edge cases, what broke at scale. The detail is the point: these threads carry the kind of specifics that only a long thread holds.
A permanent asset
A good answer attaches to your name
Forum identity is durable. Your posts sit under one username, in one profile, with a history anyone can read end to end. A run of genuinely useful answers becomes a reference people check before they decide, and it stays yours.
Two or three rooms
Every category has its deciding forums
For any category, two or three forums set the reputation every tool in it carries. Their regulars get quoted in comparisons and asked directly for recommendations. Becoming a familiar name in those rooms changes how your product is described everywhere else.
Getting connected
How connecting Discourse works
Four steps, and the second one is the only place you do anything. The credential below is the literal artefact the connect flow uses — not a marketing paraphrase of it.
- 1
Start from the Discourse account you already have
FounderReply acts on the account you sign in with, under a connection you authorise yourself and can withdraw again from Discourse whenever you like. It never makes an account of its own.
- 2
How you connect it — Per-forum API key
An administrator issues the key in the forum’s admin area — you cannot self-serve one — and it is revoked from the same place.
Connect requestapp/api/v1/connect/discourse POST /api/v1/connect/discourse { "workspace_id": "ws_…", "instance_url": "https://forum.example.com", "api_key": "…", "api_username": "yourname" } - 3
The agent reads before it writes
Discovery runs on that connection: it finds the Discourse threads where you are a genuine answer and pulls the parent in with the draft, so you are approving a reply in context rather than a sentence with no thread attached. Reading is never gated.
- 4
You set the dial, per action
Each action on Discourse has its own level, and you can move any of them — including past where Discourse’s own rules sit, once FounderReply has named the rule you are crossing and the account risk. Your setting is the one that applies, and every change is logged as yours.
Out of the box
What may run unattended on Discourse
One setting decides whether an action happens by itself: your own level for it, per network. Every action ships at what Discourse's own rules allow, and you can move any of it — including past that line, once you have been told which rule it crosses. Read from the connector's capability flags and lib/autonomy.ts at render time.
| You start at | Discourse’s own rules | |
|---|---|---|
| Publish your own postOriginal content from your connected account | Waits for your approval | Runs automatically |
| Reply on your own postsAnswering comments left on your content | Waits for your approval | Runs automatically |
| Direct messagePrivate messages to a person | Waits for your approval | Waits for your approval |
| Comment on someone else’s postThe highest-risk action on every platform | Off by default | Waits for your approval |
Discourse forums gate new accounts by trust level and police self-promotion through their own moderators. Publishing your own topics and replying on your own threads start unattended; replying to other people and sending private messages start held for a human.
The room
The forums your customers already live in
Discourse runs the community forums of a large share of developer tools, open-source projects and SaaS products. If your buyers are in one, they are in it repeatedly and by name — which makes a forum a very different surface from a feed. You are not reaching an audience; you are participating in a room where people recognise each other.
Discourse gates new accounts by trust level: a fresh account cannot post links, cannot message freely, and is visibly new to everyone reading. Forums also police self-promotion through people rather than filters, and those people are usually the ones who run the product the forum is about.
What good participation looks like on a Discourse forum
- Earn the trust level before you need it. A brand-new account replying to strangers reads exactly as it looks.
- Post in the category the forum expects, and never cross-post the same reply into several threads.
- Disclose the affiliation in the reply itself, not in a profile nobody opens.
- Remember that a v1 reply lands on the topic rather than a specific post, so write it to make sense to the whole thread.
The gate
On Discourse, you are the one who decides.
Discourse is reached with Per-forum API key, on the account you connected. The agent reads freely, drafts in your voice, and stops at your queue — and whether a given action keeps stopping is a dial you own, per action.
- Acts on the Discourse account you connected, under a credential you can withdraw from Discourse’s own settings.
- Shows you the thread a draft answers, before you approve it.
- Starts every action where Discourse’s own rules put it.
- Names the rule you are crossing, and the account risk, before it saves a looser dial — and records the change as yours.
FAQ
Discourse, answered plainly
A forum administrator, in the forum’s own admin area. You cannot self-serve one, which is deliberate on Discourse’s part: the key acts as a named forum user, so the forum’s owner decides whether an automated tool gets to act there at all.
No. Discourse has no cross-forum index and the connector holds one key for one install, so discovery, replies and messages all stay inside that forum. Connecting a second forum means a second key issued by that forum’s admin.
No. Discourse API keys are long-lived and there is no refresh flow, so the connection does not quietly lapse. Revoking it is an admin action inside the forum, and it takes effect immediately for every action the agent would take.
They apply to the agent exactly as they apply to you, because the key acts as a forum user. A new account cannot post links or message freely until the forum promotes it, and the API returns the same refusal the web interface would.
Keep reading
Lemmy automationWhat the agent does on LemmyRead Reddit automationWhat the agent does on RedditRead Stack Exchange automationWhat the agent does on Stack ExchangeRead Social media automation complianceGuide — the platform rules behind the defaultsRead The social agentDiscovery, drafting and the approval queue in one placeRead All supported networksEvery network the agent works, and what it does on eachRead
Ready when you are
Connect Discourse and read the first drafts.
The free plan connects one account, and nothing is published to Discourse until you release it.
Free to start · Approval on by default · No card required