Keeping the grid alive
You shoot, crop and queue so the account looks tended. Someone who lands on your profile after a recommendation should find work from this week, so something goes up whether or not you feel like shooting.
On Instagram
Instagram marketing automation that answers the inbox as well as the feed
Instagram runs through an Instagram Business or Creator account linked to a Facebook Page. FounderReply publishes to it, drafts replies to the comments left on your posts, and answers direct messages inside Meta’s 24-hour window. Publishing and your own comment threads run unattended; every message waits for a human.
- Acts on the Instagram account you already own — connected with Facebook Login (Meta scopes), and revocable by you without touching us.
- Finds the Instagram threads where you are a genuine answer, and brings the parent in with the draft so you approve a reply in context.
- Every draft lands in one queue. What leaves it unattended is whatever you set, per action, and it starts where Instagram’s own rules put it.
Posted
On Instagram
What you're already doing on Instagram
Instagram is a standing commitment. The grid has to keep moving, every picture needs a caption that says something, and the questions arrive in two places at once — under the post and in the inbox.
Writing captions that say something
The picture gets the scroll to stop. The caption is where you say what it is, who it is for and what it costs — a paragraph of real writing under every post, several times a week.
Answering before the interest cools
Comments and DMs arrive while you are doing everything else. Someone asks about the price at nine at night, and the answer is worth most while they are still looking at the picture that prompted it.
Instagram, as it looks
Every Instagram surface, working
The thread, the reply and the message — drawn as Instagram draws them, with the agent's draft arriving in each one. What you see here is what lands in your approval queue.
Published
On the post
The caption, written for you
Your agent writes the caption under the picture — what it is, who it is for, what happens next — in the voice the rest of your grid is written in.
Replied
Under the post
A reply in the comments
Someone asks a question under your picture. The answer lands right beneath theirs, specific to what they asked, with your handle on it.
Sent
In the inbox
A direct message answered
The buying question usually moves to the inbox. Your agent drafts the answer and it goes out in the thread where they asked, from your own account.
The case
Why founders need to be on Instagram
Instagram is where a small company is looked at before it is read. The picture, the grid and the last reply set what a stranger expects from you, and the message thread is where they decide. For anything people can see, it is the shopfront.
Where taste is judged
Your grid is the first impression
Someone hears your name and opens the profile before the website. Nine squares tell them what the product looks like, how careful you are, and whether this is a company they want to buy from — all before a single word gets read.
DMs convert
The inbox is a real sales channel
For consumer and prosumer products the buying question is private: sizing, price, lead time, will it work for me. It arrives as a message, and the founder who answers it inside the hour is the one who takes the order.
Proof you are alive
An active account is the trust signal
A profile with work from this week tells a stranger the company is running, shipping and staffed. It is the cheapest proof a two-person business has, and it is read in about three seconds by everyone who checks you out.
Replies are the sale
The buying conversation happens in the replies
Under every post people ask what it is made of, where it ships from, whether you do custom work. Answer them there and you are writing the sales page in public, in front of the next hundred readers of that thread.
Getting connected
How connecting Instagram works
Four steps, and the second one is the only place you do anything. The credential below is the literal artefact the connect flow uses — not a marketing paraphrase of it.
- 1
Start from the Instagram account you already have
FounderReply acts on the account you sign in with, under a connection you authorise yourself and can withdraw again from Instagram whenever you like. It never makes an account of its own.
- 2
Hand over exactly one credential — Facebook Login (Meta scopes)
Instagram authorises through Facebook Login against the Page the Business account is linked to, and the connector holds the scopes below.
Scopes requestedlib/connectors/instagram.ts instagram_basic instagram_content_publish instagram_manage_comments instagram_manage_messages pages_show_list pages_read_engagement business_management - 3
The agent reads before it writes
Discovery runs on that connection: it finds the Instagram threads where you are a genuine answer and pulls the parent in with the draft, so you are approving a reply in context rather than a sentence with no thread attached. Reading is never gated.
- 4
You set the dial, per action
Each action on Instagram has its own level, and you can move any of them — including past where Instagram’s own rules sit, once FounderReply has named the rule you are crossing and the account risk. Your setting is the one that applies, and every change is logged as yours.
Out of the box
What may run unattended on Instagram
One setting decides whether an action happens by itself: your own level for it, per network. Every action ships at what Instagram's own rules allow, and you can move any of it — including past that line, once you have been told which rule it crosses. Read from the connector's capability flags and lib/autonomy.ts at render time.
| You start at | Instagram’s own rules | |
|---|---|---|
| Publish your own postOriginal content from your connected account | Waits for your approval | Runs automatically |
| Reply on your own postsAnswering comments left on your content | Waits for your approval | Runs automatically |
| Direct messagePrivate messages to a person | Waits for your approval | Waits for your approval |
Meta’s platform terms permit automated publishing of your own content but treat auto-DMing and auto-commenting on other accounts as engagement automation. Publishing and replies on your own posts start unattended; direct messages start held for a human.
The room
Where the conversation happens in the inbox
Instagram is a discovery surface with a private follow-up: people find a product in a feed and then ask about it in a message. That is why the useful automation there is answering comments and messages quickly rather than posting more — and why Meta wraps messaging in a 24-hour window in the first place.
Meta’s platform terms permit automated publishing of your own content but treat engagement automation — auto-commenting and auto-DMing other accounts — as grounds for restriction. The compliant shape is therefore narrow and clear: publish on a schedule, answer humans promptly, initiate nothing.
What good participation looks like on Instagram
- Automate your own publishing, never your engagement with other accounts.
- Answer inside the 24-hour window; do not build a flow that needs to message people outside it.
- Do not automate follows, likes or comments on other accounts — that is the behaviour that gets accounts restricted.
- Keep replies to your own comment threads specific; templated replies read as templated.
The gate
On Instagram, you are the one who decides.
Instagram is reached with Facebook Login (Meta scopes), on the account you connected. The agent reads freely, drafts in your voice, and stops at your queue — and whether a given action keeps stopping is a dial you own, per action.
- Acts on the Instagram account you connected, under a credential you can withdraw from Instagram’s own settings.
- Shows you the thread a draft answers, before you approve it.
- Starts every action where Instagram’s own rules put it.
- Names the rule you are crossing, and the account risk, before it saves a looser dial — and records the change as yours.
FAQ
Instagram, answered plainly
An Instagram Business or Creator account linked to a Facebook Page — the account type Meta’s publishing, comment and messaging APIs serve. Switching an existing account over takes a minute in the Instagram app, and the connection then authorises through Facebook Login against that Page.
Each new comment on your content becomes a drafted reply in your voice, attached to the post that prompted it. The comment-management scope covers reading the thread and writing the answer, so you approve a reply in context rather than a sentence with no parent.
Meta lets you send a free-form message only within 24 hours of a person’s last message to you. After that the API rejects the send unless you use an approved message tag. The connector surfaces that rejection instead of retrying around it.
Publishing and replies on your own comment threads run unattended once you set the cadence. Direct messages start held for a human, because Meta treats automated messaging as engagement automation — and FounderReply names that term before it saves a change to the default.
Keep reading
Facebook automationWhat the agent does on FacebookRead LinkedIn automationWhat the agent does on LinkedInRead X automationWhat the agent does on XRead Social media automation complianceGuide — the platform rules behind the defaultsRead The social agentDiscovery, drafting and the approval queue in one placeRead All supported networksEvery network the agent works, and what it does on eachRead
Ready when you are
Connect Instagram and read the first drafts.
The free plan connects one account, and nothing is published to Instagram until you release it.
Free to start · Approval on by default · No card required