Your meal-planning app idea already includes recipes, shopping lists and nutrition totals. Similar products exist. Before adding more features, investigate why people stop using the tools they have.
This hypothetical project uses TRMesh to organize public Reddit discussion. The deliverable is a narrow prototype brief, not proof that every proposed feature is needed.
Choose the community before collecting posts
Meal preparation can mean protein targets in a fitness community, accommodating children in a family community, or reducing waste in a budgeting community. Read the description and rules first. The community-information request below is the starting point; then use the appropriate documented post and comment requests or read originals manually.
Keep communities distinct rather than combining unrelated discussions into a large-looking sample.
Look for the last time a plan failed
Concrete stories reveal conditions: overtime disrupted a schedule, a recipe used only part of a grocery package, or a household member changed dinner plans. Record the original plan, the point of failure and the workaround.
“This app is terrible” is not yet a feature requirement. Keep its source and look for context.
Separate tasks that sound similar
These fictional examples illustrate the method:
| Account | Actual task | Unsupported feature conclusion |
|---|---|---|
| A bag of spinach was not finished | Match package sizes to portions | Automatic ordering must be preferred |
| An evening meal was canceled | Rearrange ingredients already bought | More reminder notifications are needed |
| A housemate avoids spicy food | Coordinate preferences in one meal | A complete nutrition profile is essential |
Keep comments attached to their parent thread. A highly scored reply may be a joke or correction, not a shared customer requirement.
Ask the AI to group tasks, not write the roadmap
Request fields for original plan, obstacle, workaround, unresolved problem and source. Review proposed groupings yourself. Excess purchasing and a canceled dinner may both cause leftovers, but one concerns quantities and the other rescheduling. A broad “reduce waste” label does not tell you what to prototype first.
Demonstrate one change
A static prototype could show what happens to existing ingredients when Wednesday dinner is canceled. Invite willing participants to try it and watch what they still calculate manually. Test whether the step reduces effort, rather than asking whether they like your product.
A public complaint is not consent to marketing contact. Arrange interviews and tests with voluntary participants.
Hand over a one-page brief
Describe the situation, current workaround, step the prototype changes, decisions left to the person and how to judge usefulness. Include contextual sources and unresolved questions. A post can inform the design without becoming another feature on a backlog.
Requests used in this project
- Fetch Reddit APP Subreddit Info：https://api.trmesh.com/openapi/api/v1/reddit/app/fetch_subreddit_info · Documentation
- Fetch Reddit APP Subreddit Feed：https://api.trmesh.com/openapi/api/v1/reddit/app/fetch_subreddit_feed · Documentation
- Fetch Reddit APP Dynamic Search Results：https://api.trmesh.com/openapi/api/v1/reddit/app/fetch_dynamic_search · Documentation
- Fetch Single Reddit Post Details：https://api.trmesh.com/openapi/api/v1/reddit/app/fetch_post_details · Documentation
- Fetch Reddit APP Post Comments：https://api.trmesh.com/openapi/api/v1/reddit/app/fetch_post_comments · Documentation
- Fetch Reddit APP Comment Replies (Sub-comments)：https://api.trmesh.com/openapi/api/v1/reddit/app/fetch_comment_replies · Documentation
Request URL and parameters
GET https://api.trmesh.com/openapi/api/v1/reddit/app/fetch_subreddit_info
| Parameter | Type | Required | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
language |
string | No | Preferred response language as an IETF language tag; default: en-US |
subreddit_name |
string | No | Subreddit name |
need_format |
boolean | No | Whether to clean and format the data |
Run the Python example
Install requests and set TRMESH_API_TOKEN in your environment. Replace the sample identifiers with the public object you intend to inspect. Example IDs may no longer be available.
import os
import requests
# Read your own developer key from the server environment.
url = "https://api.trmesh.com/openapi/api/v1/reddit/app/fetch_subreddit_info"
params = {
"subreddit_name": "pics",
"need_format": "false"
}
response = requests.get(
url, params=params, timeout=30,
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['TRMESH_API_TOKEN']}"},
)
response.raise_for_status()
payload = response.json()
print(payload) # Inspect the actual response before mapping fields
Endpoint documentation · Free profile tool
API calls use your TRMesh account allowance. Check the endpoint price before running a script.
