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Instagram

Connect an Instagram Business or Creator account and your flow can answer DMs, reply to comments, and moderate — around the clock, from the same AgentFlow you use everywhere else.

Set the account up first: Instagram credentials. The node reference lives at Instagram trigger and Instagram tool.

What Instagram flows can do​

  • Answer DMs — text, and voice notes transcribed to text.
  • React to comments — reply publicly under the post, or DM the commenter privately.
  • Moderate — hide or delete comments that break your rules.
  • Read images and video customers send, and pass them to a vision-capable model.
  • Step aside for a human — when an operator answers from the Instagram inbox, Flowera notices and stops replying. See Manual mode.

Trigger events: DMs and comments​

The Start node subscribes to each event type separately, so one account can feed several flows:

EventFires when
Direct messageSomeone sends a DM to the account
CommentSomeone comments on one of your posts
MentionSomeone mentions the account in a comment or caption
Story replySomeone replies to one of your stories

Subscribe only to the events a flow should handle. A comment-moderation flow that also listens for DMs will run on every DM too — and bill you for it.

Actions available​

ActionNotes
Send Direct MessagePlain text DM
Send Image MessageImage, video, or audio — images up to 8 MB, video/audio up to 25 MB
Reply to CommentPublic reply under the post
Send Private ReplyDM to a commenter — once per comment, within 7 days
Hide CommentHides it from other viewers without deleting it
Delete CommentRemoves it permanently

Even a plain DM answer goes through one of these — Send Direct Message, in a Tool node or attached to an Agent. Direct Reply only writes into the Flowera transcript; it never calls Instagram, so a flow that ends there leaves the customer with no reply.

Recipe: reply to a comment, then DM the commenter​

Answer publicly so everyone sees you're responsive, then move the real conversation into DMs.

  1. Start — Instagram trigger, subscribed to Comment only.
  2. Agent — reads the comment and writes two things: a short public answer and a longer private one, via structured output.
  3. Tool (Instagram) — Reply to Comment, fed the public field.
  4. Tool (Instagram) — Send Private Reply, fed the private field.

Private Reply is what makes this work: it's the only way to open a DM thread with someone who has only ever commented.

Recipe: answer DMs automatically​

  1. Start — Instagram trigger, subscribed to Direct message.
  2. Retriever — pull the relevant part of your knowledge base.
  3. Agent — answer from the retrieved text, with a system prompt that says what to do when the answer isn't there.
  4. Tool (Instagram) — Send Direct Message, with messageDM set to the Agent's output.

Build this end to end in the Instagram DM autoresponder tutorial.

Limits and gotchas​

  • Business or Creator accounts only. Instagram's messaging API doesn't work with personal accounts.
  • Private Reply is one-shot — one per comment, and only within 7 days of it.
  • Tokens expire. If sends start failing with an "access token has expired" error, reconnect the account; the flow picks up the new token with no edits.
  • A voice note isn't automatically the question. The transcript is available to the flow, but you have to reference it deliberately — see Uploads and assets.
  • Echoes. Messages the account itself sends — including automated greetings attached to ads — arrive as events too. The trigger filters them, but if a flow appears to answer itself, start here.
  • Rapid-fire messages. Customers often send three short messages in a row. Flowera batches them so the flow sees one coherent question instead of three fragments.