Instagram Posting Pipeline#

End-to-end Instagram automation pipeline. Generate professional promotional images and publish them automatically to any Instagram Business account — no third-party automation tools needed.

Skill Scope#

• Generate promotional images (text + branding overlays, 1080×1350)
• Upload images to Cloudinary for public hosting
• Publish to Instagram via Meta Graph API
• Optional: extract business info from a public website URL

Not in scope: scraping private/internal networks, storing credentials externally, third-party data sharing.

Install Model#

Instruction-driven skill — all scripts are bundled in the package. No external binaries, installers, or runtime dependencies beyond Python 3.8+ and Pillow. Place the scripts/ folder alongside the skill and configure env vars to use.

Pipeline Flow#

text

Business info (name, details, website URL)
    → scrape_business.py (optional — auto-extract from website)
    → generate_course_promo.py
    → upload_cloudinary.py
    → post_to_instagram.py
    → Instagram post URL

Data Extraction (Optional)#

scrape_business.py fetches a user-provided public URL to extract business info — name, tagline, services, contact — for auto-generating content.

What it does:

• Makes an outbound HTTP(S) request to the provided URL
• Parses the HTML response using Python's built-in html.parser
• Extracts title, meta description, H1 tags, paragraphs, and contact patterns
• Returns structured data to populate the image generation prompt
• May extract email and phone if publicly available

What it does NOT do:

• Does not follow redirects to third-party domains (all 3xx responses are blocked)
• Does not access internal/private networks
• Does not store or retransmit scraped data

Do not provide internal/private URLs (e.g. localhost, 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x). SSRF protections enforced: DNS resolution + private-IP blocking (via ipaddress module), SSL certificate verification, scheme/hostname allowlist, and all redirects are explicitly blocked (no following 3xx responses to any destination).

Environment Setup#

Before using, set these environment variables:

bash

# Meta Graph API (required)
export IG_ACCESS_TOKEN="your_page_access_token"
export IG_BUSINESS_ACCOUNT_ID="your_ig_business_account_id"
export IG_DEFAULT_CAPTION="Your default caption"

# Cloudinary (required — create your own free account)
# No default credentials are used — you must set up your own
export CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME="your_cloud_name"
export CLOUDINARY_UPLOAD_PRESET="your_unsigned_preset"
export CLOUDINARY_FOLDER="mybusiness"

# Image output (optional)
export IG_PIPELINE_OUTPUT_DIR="./output"

Security & Credentials#

Your credentials stay yours.

• Tokens are user-provided at runtime (environment variables)
• Tokens are never stored externally or sent to any third-party service
• Tokens are used only during execution and never persisted
• SSL/TLS verification is enforced on all outbound requests
• Use least-privilege and test accounts during evaluation
• Never log tokens — only non-sensitive metadata is logged

Cloudinary hardening recommendation: Prefer signed upload presets, or restrict unsigned presets by folder/origin in your Cloudinary dashboard.

Getting Credentials#

Access Token:

1. Go to https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer/
2. Select your Facebook App (must have instagram_content_publish and pages_read_engagement permissions)
3. Generate token for your Page
4. Grant pages_read_engagement, instagram_content_publish

IG Business Account ID:

• Found in Meta Business Suite → Instagram settings → Account ID

Step-by-Step Usage#

Step 1: Generate Image#

python

from generate_course_promo import generate_course_promo

path = generate_course_promo(
    course_name="Diploma in Artificial Intelligence",
    institution="CADDESK Centre",
    duration="90 Weeks",
    bullets=[
        "Machine Learning & Data Science",
        "Building Intelligent Systems",
        "Algorithm Development",
        "Real-World AI Projects",
    ],
    hook_lines=["Your Future in AI", "Starts Here."],
    cta_text="Ready to shape the future with AI?",
    handle="@caddeskcentre",
    output_filename="course_promo.png"
)

CLI:

bash

python scripts/generate_course_promo.py

Step 2: Upload to Cloudinary#

bash

python scripts/upload_cloudinary.py <image_path> [folder]

Returns a public URL like https://res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/xyz.png

Step 3: Post to Instagram#

bash

python scripts/post_to_instagram.py <image_url> <caption>

Or programmatically:

python

from post_to_instagram import post_to_instagram

success, post_id, ig_url = post_to_instagram(
    image_url="https://res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/xyz.png",
    caption="Your caption with #hashtags"
)

Caption Structure#

text

[HOOK - bold claim or question, 1-2 lines]
[VALUE - what they'll learn/achieve]
[CTA - link in bio / DM to enroll / visit website]
[8-15 hashtags - mix of broad + niche]

Troubleshooting#

ErrorFix401 Invalid OAuthToken expired — regenerate at Graph API ExplorerIG token format errorUse Page Access Token, not IG-only tokenimage_url requiredImage not publicly accessible — upload to Cloudinary first403 ForbiddenApp not in Live mode or instagram_content_publish permission not approvedCloudinary 400Image too large (>10MB), unsupported format, or credentials not configuredIG account not foundAccount not set as Business/Creator mode in MetaScrape returns NoneWebsite uses JS rendering — provide details manually

Multiple Accounts#

To switch between IG accounts, update environment variables before each post:

bash

export IG_ACCESS_TOKEN="token_for_account_a"
export IG_BUSINESS_ACCOUNT_ID="ig_id_account_a"
python scripts/post_to_instagram.py <url> <caption>