What pre-event mode is for
A normal cleanup is a one-time sweep. Pre-event mode is different: it's tied to a date, and it keeps working right up to it. You use it when there's a specific day your profile is about to matter more than usual.
- A job interview or reference check.
- A product launch, a talk, a press cycle.
- Anything where someone will look you up, and you know roughly when.
The deep clean up front
It starts with a thorough sweep now - your filters and recipes applied across your whole reachable history, with overwrite-before-delete on so the content, not just its presence, is dealt with. This is the bulk of the work, and it happens the moment you set the date.
Clean early. The days before the event are for watching, not scrambling.
Daily monitoring until the date
After the deep clean, pre-event mode keeps an eye out. It re-scans on a tight cadence for anything new that matches your filters - a fresh comment, a reply you dashed off and forgot - and handles it before the day arrives.
The point is that your account doesn't drift back out of shape between the clean and the event. A cleanup that was perfect two weeks ago isn't much use if you posted something new yesterday.
Verified by the deadline
On a normal run, verification happens seven days later. Pre-event compresses that: each removal is re-checked on an accelerated cycle so that by your deadline, items are confirmed gone from public view rather than merely sent for deletion.
If Reddit lets something resurface, you find out while there's still time to act - not after the interview.
What you have on the day
When the date arrives you have two concrete things: a record of exactly what was removed - subreddit, score, timestamp, permalink for every item - and verification that each one is actually gone from public view.
It's not a signed certificate or a legal document; it's an honest, timestamped account of the work and proof it took. For most situations, that's exactly what you actually need.