# Ig Saves > Turn Instagram saved posts into mindspace idea cards, then into content angles. Parses saves out of Instagram's official data export, enriches each one with its caption plus a watch-video transcript, and stages them for triage into ~/mindspace. Activates when the user says "process my Instagram saves", "ingest my saves export", "what did I save on Instagram", or asks to turn a saved reel into content ideas or hooks. - Skill: `ryankolean/ig-saves` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 5 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add ryankolean/ig-saves` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/ryankolean/ig-saves/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: ryankolean (https://skillmd.com/u/ryankolean) - Updated: 2026-09-21 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/ryankolean/ig-saves --- # Instagram Saves → mindspace Two phases, deliberately separate: **ingest** is mechanical (scripts), **triage** is judgment (you). Never let a script author an idea card — project, tags, and framing are decisions, not fields. ## Why the export, not a cookie daemon Instagram has no official saved-posts API. Every "auto-sync my saves" tool drives the private web API with a session cookie lifted from DevTools, which violates Instagram's ToS and risks the account — instagrapi's maintainers call it "fragile in production." The official export carries the same saves with no such risk. The trade is a manual request every week or two instead of a cron job. That trade was made deliberately; do not quietly "improve" this by adding cookie auth. ## Phase 1 — Ingest **Requesting the export** (the user does this; ~15 min to 48 h to arrive): Instagram → Accounts Center → Your information and permissions → Download your information → **JSON** format → Saved posts. The download link expires after 4 days. Then: ```bash # 1. Parse new saves out of the export (zip or unzipped dir) python3 ~/.claude/skills/ig-saves/scripts/parse_export.py ~/Downloads/instagram-export.zip \ > /tmp/saves.jsonl # 2. Enrich each with caption + transcript (rate-limited on purpose) bash ~/.claude/skills/ig-saves/scripts/enrich.sh --limit 20 < /tmp/saves.jsonl ``` Staged files land in `~/.cache/ig-saves/pending/.md` — frontmatter plus caption and transcript. State lives in `~/.cache/ig-saves/state.json`; a save already staged is skipped, and one already processed is never re-emitted. | Flag | Purpose | |---|---| | `--limit N` | Max posts per run (default 20). Rerun to continue | | `--sleep N` | Seconds between fetches (default 4). Do not lower it | | `--mode balanced` | Also extract frames — for visual/design saves | | `--all` (parser) | Ignore state and re-emit everything | Posts that are private, deleted, or rate-limited are staged with `status: unavailable` rather than silently dropped. Report them; don't retry in a loop. ## Classification — the two axes Every save gets both. `idea_type` says what it is (mindspace's existing enum); `disposition` says what happens to it. Disposition is the axis that decides where a card lands and when it is done. | disposition | idea_type | Destination | Done when | |---|---|---|---| | `queue` | `build` | mindspace `inbox/` | Card carries a concrete first step | | `evaluate` | `try` | mindspace card, tool named in the title | Tool installed and kept, or rejected with a reason | | `adopt` | `read` | A CLAUDE.md rule or a skill — **not** a card | Rule text merged, or explicitly declined | | `reconstruct` | `research` | mindspace card with a research task | Claim independently verified or disproved | | `reference` | `explore` | mindspace card **with frames** | Retrievable when building something similar | | `intel` | `research` | mindspace card scoped to summit / rare-find | Insight recorded against a specific offer | | `personal` | any | mindspace `project: personal` + `subcategory` | Filed under its topic | | `expired` | — | `archive/YYYY-MM/`, no card | Marked processed, never resurfaces | ### Precedence ladder Many saves match several shapes, so order decides. **First match wins:** 1. `personal` — non-work topic, whatever collection Instagram put it in. Instagram collections are assigned loosely; a hand-massage reel filed under "Interesting knowledge" is still personal. Judge the content, never the collection name. 2. `expired` — names a superseded tool or model, or `saved_at` is older than 18 months and the content is a tool list. Evergreen technique never expires on age alone. 3. `adopt` — the transcript is self-contained and it changes how you work. 4. `evaluate` — names a specific installable tool, repo, or MCP server. 5. `queue` — describes a concrete buildable artifact. 6. `intel` — pricing, offers, positioning, business model. 7. `reference` — the value is visual. 8. `reconstruct` — gated, and the payload is genuinely absent from the transcript. ### Never trade a DM for the answer Roughly a quarter of work-flavored saves are lead magnets: "comment X and I'll send it." Do **not** DM for these, and do not create a chase list. `reconstruct` means: capture the *claim* the reel makes, then run it through our own research and evaluation. The reel is a prompt for investigation, not a source. The card records what was claimed, what we verified independently, and the verdict. If a technique is worth having, we can derive it — and we end up understanding it rather than owning someone's PDF. `reconstruct` sits last on the ladder on purpose. A gated reel that explains its technique fully in the transcript is `adopt` or `evaluate`; the gate is irrelevant when the substance is already there. Only reels where the payload truly never arrives fall through. ### Personal subcategories `personal` saves carry a `subcategory` drawn from the topic, not from the Instagram collection name (those are inconsistent — "food", "Food", and "Food N Stuff" are the same thing). Normalize to: `food`, `drinks`, `home`, `garden`, `travel`, `health`, `relationships`, `gifts`, `pets`, `games`, `kids`, `style`, `finance`, `career`, `misc`. `finance` and `career` cover personal money and personal job-search material — debt mechanics, asset protection, job-market reality. They are personal even when Instagram filed them under a business collection, and they are not `intel`: `intel` is only for material that informs a Summit or Rare Find offer. ### Thin transcripts About a quarter of reels carry their meaning on screen rather than in speech. Two distinct failure shapes, both measured on a real batch (35 of 124): - **Thin** — transcript under 30 words. The caption usually carries the meaning. - **Music-only** — whisper faithfully transcribes the backing track, so the card reads as song lyrics. Detect it: three or more of `yeah|oh oh|la la|baby|woah` in a transcript under 120 words. The transcript is worse than useless here because it looks like content while saying nothing about the reel. Never classify a music-only reel from its transcript. Re-run it with `--mode balanced` and read the frames, or leave it unclassified. Anything heading for `reference` needs the frames pass regardless — that disposition is defined by visual value, so a transcript-only `reference` card is empty by construction. ### Dedupe on content, not just shortcode The same reel gets reposted by different accounts, so `state.json` (keyed on shortcode) will not catch it. Before creating cards, fingerprint the first ~25 words of each transcript and collapse matches — one card, with the other URLs listed as alternate sources. Measured rate on the first batch: 1 duplicate pair in 124, which scales to a meaningful number across ~1,100 saves. ## Phase 2 — Triage into mindspace Read `~/mindspace/AGENTS.md` and `_meta/schema.md` first — they are authoritative and they change. Then for each staged file: 1. Read the caption and transcript. For a visual/design save, or when the transcript is thin, read the frames from its `manifest:` path — the reel's *look* is often the point, and text alone will miss it. 2. Decide `project`, `idea_type`, `tags`, `priority`, and `suggested_action`. Ask when a save is genuinely ambiguous rather than guessing a project. 3. Write the card to `~/mindspace/inbox/` as `YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM-{slug}.md`, matching the schema exactly: `source: social`, `source_platform: instagram`, `source_author: `, `source_url: `. 4. Put the faithful source material under `## Context / source` — quote the caption and the transcript lines that carry the idea. That section is evidence, not summary. 5. Update `_meta/index.json`. Commit with a `capture:` prefix. No emojis. 6. Close the loop — never hand-edit the state JSON: ```bash python3 ~/.claude/skills/ig-saves/scripts/mark_processed.py [ ...] python3 ~/.claude/skills/ig-saves/scripts/mark_processed.py --list # what is still staged ``` `priority: high` auto-creates a Google Calendar event — be deliberate. ## Phase 3 — Content angles (on request only) When the user asks for angles on a card, append a block to the existing card rather than rewriting it, mirroring the `` convention already in use: ``` ## Content angles ### Hooks - three variations, each a different emotional entry point ### Outline Hook -> key points -> CTA ### Platform notes - Instagram / TikTok / YouTube differences worth the reshoot ``` Ground every angle in what the source actually did — cite timestamps from the transcript. Generic hook templates are worthless; the value is in why *this* post worked. Do not invent engagement numbers. ## Do not - Do not add cookie-based or private-API fetching (see above) - Do not write directly to `library/` — captures land in `inbox/` and get triaged - Do not let a script generate card summaries, tags, or projects - Do not batch more than ~20 posts per run; the sleep between fetches is deliberate ## Dependencies `python3`, `yt-dlp`, and the `watch-video` skill (which brings ffmpeg + whisper).