Bug: Moderation.Distinguish fails on ever-edited comments — RedditObject.edited is BoolValue but Reddit returns a float timestamp

[mattbrannon]

Summary

Calling comment.distinguish(true) on a comment that has ever been edited rejects with a gRPC
status-2 error from the platform, even though the distinguish/sticky is actually applied on Reddit.
The root cause is a protobuf contract mismatch: Reddit's API returns edited as false or a float
epoch timestamp, but Devvit's RedditObject.edited is declared google.protobuf.BoolValue, so the
gateway fails to marshal the (successful) response.

Environment

• App: confessor-mod, installed on r/confession
• SDK: @devvit/web 0.13.6 (@devvit/protos 0.13.6; flaw still present in latest @devvit/protos 0.13.10)
• Observed in production: 2026-07-28 ~07:07 UTC

Observed error

[remove] sticky distinguish failed: Error: 2 UNKNOWN: grpc invocation failed with status 2; proto: (line 1:182): invalid value for bool field value: 1785222440.0
    at callErrorFromStatus (/srv/index.cjs:5452:21)
    at Object.onReceiveStatus (/srv/index.cjs:6133:70)
    ...
    at GenericPluginClient.Distinguish (/srv/index.cjs:137177:93)
    at tM.distinguish (main.js:6:10378)
    at tM.distinguish (main.js:6:8096)
  code: 2,
  details: 'grpc invocation failed with status 2; proto: (line 1:182): invalid value for bool field value: 1785222440.0'

Note 1785222440.0 = 2026-07-28T07:07:20Z — the exact time the app had just edited the comment
before distinguishing it. It is the comment's edited timestamp, not anything the app passed: the
app called comment.distinguish(true) with a literal boolean, and @devvit/reddit's
Comment.distinguish sends only { id, how: 'yes', sticky: true }, which matches
DistinguishRequest (moderation_msg.d.ts:65-72). The failure is in the response path.

Root cause

Moderation.Distinguish returns JsonRedditObjects (moderation_svc.d.ts:34), whose
things[].data is RedditObject (common/common_msg.d.ts). In that message:

• approvedAtUtc, bannedAtUtc, created, createdUtc are correctly typed as numbers, but
• edited is declared as a bool wrapper: edited?: boolean | undefined (common_msg.d.ts:207-208),
  encoded as google.protobuf.BoolValue (common_msg.js:841-842:
  BoolValue.encode({ value: message.edited }, ...)).

Reddit's API returns edited: false for never-edited things and edited: <float epoch> for edited
things. When the gateway converts Reddit's JSON response for a distinguish call into the proto, an
edited comment's timestamp cannot unmarshal into BoolValue — hence the Go protojson error naming
the wrapper's inner field: invalid value for bool field value: 1785222440.0.

Consistent with this, the error only reproduces on the edit-then-distinguish path; distinguishing
a freshly created comment (edited: false) works.

Reproduction

const comment = await post.addComment({ text: 'hello' });
await comment.distinguish(true);            // OK — edited is false
const edited = await comment.edit({ text: 'hello (edited)' });
await edited.distinguish(true);             // throws: 2 UNKNOWN ... invalid value for bool field value: <timestamp>

Impact

• The RPC rejects, but the distinguish is applied on Reddit — the error is raised while
  marshaling the post-action comment JSON that Reddit returned, i.e. after the action succeeded.
  Apps get a spurious failure for an operation that worked, and the model fields the SDK updates from
  the response (distinguishedBy, stickied) are never populated.
• Affects any thing that has ever been edited (the edited timestamp is permanent), for every RPC
  whose response is JsonRedditObjects / RedditObject: Moderation.Distinguish (comments and
  posts, including undistinguish / distinguishAsAdmin) and LinksAndComments.EditCustomPost.
• Any app that maintains a pinned/sticky bot comment by editing it in place and re-distinguishing
  will log this failure deterministically.

Expected behavior / suggested fix

RedditObject.edited should accommodate Reddit's false | float union — e.g. type it as
google.protobuf.Value, or as a double with false normalized to unset — or the gateway should
coerce edited to truthiness before marshaling the response.

Workaround in the meantime

Treat distinguish failures matching invalid value for bool field value: <number> as
likely-succeeded (optionally verify by re-fetching the comment and checking stickied /
distinguishedBy).

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This bug was diagnosed and this report written by Claude (Claude Code, Anthropic), working from the app's production logs and the installed @devvit packages, at the app maintainer's request.