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Find Out What Your Audience Is Stuck On

My setup notes for last30days, a free Claude skill. Written by a non-coder, broken parts included.

By Nghia Vo · September 19, 2026

I'm not a developer. I don't code.

I once did a 21-day challenge learning Claude Code, and I kept a notebook of every mistake I made. By the end it had 32 of them.

So when I found a free tool that claims to tell you what people are saying about any topic in the last 30 days, I wanted to know one thing. Can someone like me actually get it running?

Honestly, the answer is yes. But not the way the tool's page makes it sound.

This guide is what happened when I set it up on September 19, 2026. Every step, the screenshots, and the part where it quietly stopped working.

Before we start, so you don't feel tricked later: the tool is free and public. It's called last30days, made by Matt Van Horn, and it's on GitHub with over 60,000 stars. You don't need me to get it.

What you get here is the stuff I had to figure out on my own. Which settings to change. What broke. How to tell when Claude is making things up. And the one prompt that actually got me real Reddit posts.

What you need

Step 1: Let Claude run code

Skills can't run unless Claude is allowed to run code on its own server.

Go to Settings → Capabilities. Turn on Code execution and file creation. Right below it, turn on Allow network egress.

Settings, then Capabilities. The switch at the bottom is the one skills need.
Settings, then Capabilities. The switch at the bottom is the one skills need.

What happened when I tried it: both were already on for me. Check anyway, it takes 10 seconds.

Step 2: Tell Claude which sites it may visit

This is the step nobody mentions.

By default, Claude's server can only reach a short list of sites for downloading software. Reddit isn't on it. So the tool installs fine, runs fine, and finds almost nothing.

On the same Capabilities page, find Additional allowed domains. Add these five, one at a time:

*.reddit.com
arctic-shift.photon-reddit.com
hn.algolia.com
gamma-api.polymarket.com
api.github.com
My five domains. The list scrolls, so the fifth one is hiding at the bottom.
My five domains. The list scrolls, so the fifth one is hiding at the bottom.

The second one is a public archive of Reddit posts. You'll need it in Step 5.

What happened when I tried it: no problems. You can delete them later with the trash icon next to each one.

Step 3: Upload the skill

  1. Go to github.com/mvanhorn/last30days-skill and open Releases on the right side.
  2. Download the file called last30days.skill. Mine was 14.5 MB.
  3. In Claude, go to Customize → Skills → Add → Upload skill.
  4. Drag the file in and hit Save. Claude runs a quick security scan first.
Customize, Skills, Add, Upload skill.
Customize, Skills, Add, Upload skill.
Done. It shows up under “Created by you” with the switch already on.
Done. It shows up under “Created by you” with the switch already on.

What happened when I tried it: it showed up under "Created by you" with the switch already on. That part was easy.

Step 4: Ask your first question

Start a new chat and type:

/last30days running out of content ideas as a creator

Swap in your own topic. Claude may ask a follow-up question about who you're researching for. Just answer it in plain words.

My first question. The model picker said Haiku 4.5.
My first question. The model picker said Haiku 4.5.

What happened when I tried it: this is where it went sideways, in two ways.

1. Reddit blocked it. I opened the little "Ran a command" box under Claude's answer. The raw output said:

Reddit: 0 items (auth-failed: HTTP 403: Forbidden)

The settings from Step 2 worked. The request got through. Reddit just refuses traffic from Claude's servers. Web search didn't work either. All I got was 3 posts from Hacker News and 6 from GitHub, and most had nothing to do with creators.

The “Ran a command” box, opened. Claude answered in Vietnamese because that’s my account language. The first line under the box says “Based on my research from the last 30 days.”
The “Ran a command” box, opened. Claude answered in Vietnamese because that’s my account language. The first line under the box says “Based on my research from the last 30 days.”

2. Claude wrote the answer anyway. It started with "Based on my research from the last 30 days" and gave me four "hot content ideas." From 9 mostly off-topic results. It had also quietly changed my question into something about YouTube monetization trends.

It asked who I was researching for. Then it went straight to “hot content ideas.”
It asked who I was researching for. Then it went straight to “hot content ideas.”

If I hadn't clicked open that box, I would've believed it.

So here's my rule now: every time, open "Ran a command" and look at how many items each source found. If Reddit says 0, the ideas below it are Claude guessing.

Step 5: The prompt that got me real Reddit posts

Reddit blocks Claude's servers. The Reddit archive from Step 2 doesn't.

Paste this into the same chat. Change the two words in capitals.

Please search the Reddit archive: run curl -s "https://arctic-shift.photon-reddit.com/api/posts/search?subreddit=SUBREDDIT&title=WORD&after=DATE&limit=25&fields=title,num_comments"
Use the date 30 days before today for DATE.
List the post titles with their comment counts.
Do not add your own ideas. Only show what the data says.

For creators, try NewTubers as the subreddit and ideas as the word.

That last line matters. Without it, Claude goes back to guessing.

What happened when I tried it: 25 real post titles from r/NewTubers, with comment counts. A few of them:

The archive prompt. Real titles with comment counts. This is the bottom of the table, the busiest posts are above it.
The archive prompt. Real titles with comment counts. This is the bottom of the table, the busiest posts are above it.

Look at the first one. It surprised me. I went in thinking people had no ideas. The post with the most replies was about the opposite problem. Plenty of ideas, can't start.

That's a better content idea than anything Claude guessed in Step 4.

Step 6: Turn the list into something you can post

This part doesn't need AI.

  1. Pick the post with the most comments.
  2. Open it on Reddit and read the replies.
  3. Copy 5 sentences people wrote, word for word. Keep the typos.
  4. Use one of them as your next title or hook.

People will say it better than you or I would. Use their words.

What this tool is good for, and what it isn't

Good for: fast-moving topics where Hacker News and GitHub talk a lot. New apps, AI tools, tech news.

Not great for: finding pain points on Reddit from claude.ai. Reddit blocks it there. I also ran it on my own computer to compare. Reddit didn't block it, but it only found 5 posts, and most were off topic. The archive prompt in Step 5 did better both times.

I'm keeping it. I just check the source counts every time now.

What's next

Here's the honest part. Nobody knows who I am. I don't have a big exit or a famous site to point to.

There's also a plainer reason. I'm 38, and I still have a 9-to-5. But the odds of a layoff where I work are high, and honestly, I don't love the job anymore. My wife and I support our two sons, my 75-year-old mom, and a bank loan. I need income that doesn't depend on one employer, and I'd rather start building it now than wait for the bad news.

So I'm going to earn it in public. For the next 21 days I'm building a small digital product with Claude, from the first idea to a working checkout page. I'll post a report every week on this site. Real numbers, including the ones that make me look bad.

I got the idea from Scott DeLong. He ran a one-year challenge on his own site and wrote up every week, wins and misses. Mine is a lot smaller.

My goal is 50 email subscribers and one sale to someone I've never met. If I miss, you'll see that too.

This guide is day one. For the first three days of the challenge, I'll use this exact setup to decide what to build.

If you try it and something breaks, tell me where you got stuck. Reply to any of my emails, or find me on X. I'm still figuring this out too.

Nghia Vo

last30days is free and open source (MIT license), made by Matt Van Horn (github.com/mvanhorn/last30days-skill). I'm not connected to the project and I don't earn anything if you use it. Screenshots taken September 19, 2026. Claude's settings pages change often, so yours may look a little different.