Instagram CLI

Terminal-first Instagram analytics, downloads, and MCP tools powered by HikerAPI, OpenRouter, and FastMCP.

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                           INSTAGRAM-CLI by @lupikovoleg

What It Does

• Search Instagram by topic with adaptive deep pagination, including multilingual reel and media discovery
• Filter search results by freshness, including today and last N days
• Fetch profile stats, reel stats, up to 100 root comments per media, likers, followers, following, stories, and highlights
• Analyze profile publications from the main grid:
  • reels
  • posts
  • carousels
• Inspect pinned posts, tagged publications, comment replies, tagged users, and media insight metrics
• Discover content and entities through:
  • hashtags
  • places
  • music tracks
  • suggested related profiles
• Check HikerAPI balance and request-rate data from the CLI or MCP
• Download Instagram content locally:
  • reels and posts
  • audio tracks
  • active stories
  • highlights
• Export collected results to csv or json
• Support natural-language interaction with tool calling in the CLI
• Handle chained workflows such as:
  • search -> inspect -> rank -> export
  • open a profile -> analyze publications -> download content
  • fetch a reel -> inspect comments or likers -> export the result
• Expose the same capability layer through a local MCP server for Claude and other MCP clients

Requirements

• macOS or Linux
• Python 3.10+
• HIKERAPI_KEY or HIKERAPI_TOKEN
• OPENROUTER_API_KEY for the interactive CLI agent

Installation

cd /path/to/instagram-cli
./install.sh

This installs two commands:

• instagram for the interactive CLI
• instagram-mcp for the local MCP server

Install as a Python dependency in another project:

pip install git+https://github.com/lupikovoleg/instagram-cli.git

First Run

The CLI uses its own .env file.

• default path: /path/to/instagram-cli/.env
• override path: INSTAGRAM_CLI_ENV_FILE=/path/to/custom.env

If required keys are missing, the CLI bootstrap asks for them and writes the local .env.

Quick Start

Start the CLI:

instagram

Typical commands:

instagram> profile lupikovoleg
instagram> search portugal creators
instagram> search reels about dubai attack
instagram> publications lupikovoleg 10 30 all
instagram> comments https://www.instagram.com/reel/XXXXXXXXXXX/ 100
instagram> download media https://www.instagram.com/reel/XXXXXXXXXXX/
instagram> export csv latest-results
instagram> how many followers does @lupikovoleg have?
instagram> find today's reels about an attack on Dubai
instagram> find 100 reels about Dubai real estate

Start the MCP server:

instagram-mcp

Use it as a Python library:

from instagram_cli import InstagramClient

client = InstagramClient.from_env(env_file="/path/to/instagram-cli/.env")
profile = client.get_profile_stats(target="lupikovoleg")

Custom agent example:

python /path/to/instagram-cli/examples/custom_agent.py \
  --env-file /path/to/instagram-cli/.env \
  "How many followers does @lupikovoleg have?"

MCP Setup

Claude Code:

claude mcp add instagram-cli -- /path/to/instagram-cli/.venv/bin/instagram-mcp

Claude Desktop config file on macOS:

~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Example:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "instagram-cli": {
      "command": "/path/to/instagram-cli/.venv/bin/instagram-mcp",
      "args": [],
      "env": {
        "INSTAGRAM_CLI_ENV_FILE": "/path/to/instagram-cli/.env"
      }
    }
  }
}

Documentation

• Internal Python integration is documented in the Python library guide. For your own Python product, prefer direct embedding with InstagramClient over MCP.
• CLI guide
• Python library guide
• MCP guide
• Architecture
• Troubleshooting and configuration

Project Notes

• CLI mode uses OpenRouter for natural-language tool selection and query expansion.
• Search is adaptive by default: if limit is omitted, the tool can paginate internally up to 50 final results; explicit one-shot search requests are capped at 100.
• High-level comment collection returns root comments only and can paginate internally up to 100 comments per media.
• MCP mode does not use OpenRouter internally for search. MCP clients can pass query_variants when richer multilingual retrieval is needed.
• Python library mode uses the same deterministic InstagramOps layer as the CLI and MCP server, exposed through InstagramClient.
• Expensive follower and liker analysis is intentionally capped by default to avoid burning HikerAPI credits.
• Some tools are exact page reads, while sampled ranking tools explicitly mark themselves as approximate.