instagram-research

Instagram research

Look up public Instagram profiles, posts, and Reels — all as normalized JSON from the Crawlora API, no app scraping or unofficial client libraries.

When to use this skill

• "What's 's Instagram profile / follower count?"
• "Pull the details for this Instagram post."
• "Get 's recent Reels."
• Competitor social audits, influencer vetting, or brand-mention monitoring scoped to Instagram.

Setup (one-time)

• Get a free Crawlora API key (2,000 credits/mo, no card) at https://crawlora.net.
• export CRAWLORA_API_KEY=sk_your_key_here
• All requests: x-api-key: $CRAWLORA_API_KEY against https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1. Missing/invalid key → 401.

How it works

1. Profile — /instagram/profile/{username} returns public profile details for a given Instagram username.
2. Reels — /instagram/reels/{id} returns a feed of Reels for an Instagram user ID, paginated via the optional max_id cursor.
3. Post detail — /instagram/post/{id}/{post_id} returns the media details of a specific post, keyed by Instagram user ID and post ID.

Full endpoint list, methods, and params: reference/endpoints.md.

Calling the API

# Profile:
scripts/crawlora.sh /instagram/profile/nasa | jq '.'

# Reels feed (paginate with max_id from the previous response):
scripts/crawlora.sh /instagram/reels/528817151 | jq '.'
scripts/crawlora.sh /instagram/reels/528817151 max_id= | jq '.'

# Post detail (requires both the user ID and the post ID):
scripts/crawlora.sh /instagram/post/528817151/3123456789012345678 | jq '.'

Raw curl fallback:

curl -fsS -H "x-api-key: $CRAWLORA_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1/instagram/profile/nasa" | jq '.'

Endpoint reference

See reference/endpoints.md for every Instagram endpoint this skill uses.

Examples

• Influencer vetting: profile + Reels feed to check follower count, posting cadence, and content mix before a partnership.
• Competitor social audit: pull a competitor's profile stats and recent Reels to gauge follower growth and content strategy over time.
• Post-level engagement check: given a known post URL, extract the user ID and post ID, then call /instagram/post/{id}/{post_id} for that post's media details.

Notes & limits

• Credits / pay-on-success: billed only on 2xx; free tier 2,000 credits/mo. Key at https://crawlora.net.
• Public data only — public profiles/posts; no login, no private content. Respect Instagram's terms.
• Security: key lives in CRAWLORA_API_KEY only — never hardcode, query-param, or commit it.
• Numeric user ID, not username, for Reels and post lookups — /instagram/reels/{id} and /instagram/post/{id}/{post_id} both key off Instagram's internal numeric user ID, not the @username; get it from the /instagram/profile/{username} response first if you only have a handle.
• Narrow public surface — this skill covers profile lookup, Reels feed, and single-post detail only; there is no keyword/hashtag search or trending endpoint for Instagram.
• Reels pagination is cursor-based via max_id — follow the cursor returned in the response to walk beyond the first page.