Appearance
Connecting Your Instagram Account
Connect an Instagram business account to your MyChatbot agent so it can handle direct messages, comments, story reactions, and other interactions — a seamless customer-service experience on one of the most popular social platforms.
At a glance
| You need | Where | Result |
|---|---|---|
| An agent to connect | Channels tab → your agent → Instagram | Instagram channel scoped to that agent |
| A Meta business, Facebook page, and linked Instagram account | Connect Instagram → Meta authorization page | Agent authorized to act on the account |
| Behavior settings (reactions, comments, follower check, etc.) | Channel settings after connecting | Agent responds the way you want |
Connect in 4 steps:
- Open the Channels tab in your MyChatbot dashboard.
- Select the agent you want to connect, then open its Instagram channel.
- Click Connect Instagram.
- Complete the Meta authorization, then return to the dashboard to configure behavior.
In the app
Channels live at app.mychatbot.app/channels → pick your agent → Instagram. Each channel is scoped to a single agent, so connect the agent you want answering Instagram before you authorize.
Authentication
Clicking Connect Instagram redirects you to the Meta (Facebook) authorization page. There you:
- Select your business.
- Select your Instagram/Facebook page.
- Select your Instagram account.
- Authorize the necessary permissions.
After completing these steps you're redirected back to the MyChatbot dashboard, where your connected Instagram account is displayed.
Access can expire
Instagram/Meta may require periodic re-authentication when access expires. If the agent stops responding, reconnect the account from the Instagram channel (use Connect Instagram again, or Revoke channel and reconnect).
Behavior settings
Once connected, tune how the agent reacts to different Instagram events. All of these are toggles and fields in the channel settings.
| Setting | What it does | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Ignore Message Reactions | Skips reactions customers add to direct messages (e.g. an emoji on your reply). | You don't want the agent to treat a thumbs-up on a DM as a new message. |
| Ignore Story Reactions | Skips emoji-only replies customers send in reaction to your stories. | High story volume — avoid flooding the agent with quick emoji reactions. |
| Ignore Story Mentions | Skips mentions of your page that customers add to their own stories. | You don't want the agent to respond every time you're tagged in a story. |
| Ignore Comments | Completely ignores comments on posts and reels — no public reply, no DM outreach. Also hides all comment-reply settings below. | You want DMs handled but all comment-based interactions switched off. |
| Enable Follower Check | Lets the agent verify whether the person it's talking to follows your page, so it can respond differently to followers and non-followers. | Follower-gated offers, or a warmer greeting for people who already follow you. |
| Instagram Products | Exposes your Instagram posts as products, so the agent can search your feed and recommend posts as products in chat. | You sell through Instagram posts and want the agent to find them (see About Instagram Products). |
| Reply mode (Custom message / AI-generated) | Controls how the agent replies to comments — a fixed line or an AI-written reply per comment. | See Comment replies below. |
| Quick comment reply | The public one-liner posted under a comment (shown in Custom message mode). When someone comments on a post, the agent can also reach out to them privately via DM. | Move public comments into a private conversation. |
| Disable batch image sending | Messages with multiple images are sent separately instead of as a single album/batch. | Audiences or clients that render albums poorly. |
| Voice reply | Choose whether the agent replies with voice, and which voice it uses, when customers send voice messages. | You want spoken replies to match your brand. |
| Reply Delay (s) | Adds a delay, in seconds, between receiving a message and responding. | Make replies feel less instant/robotic, or batch rapid-fire messages. |
About Follower Check
When Enable Follower Check is on, the agent gains the ability to look up whether the current customer follows your Instagram page and use that in the conversation. Tell it how and when to use this in your main agent instructions — for example, "Only share the discount code with followers." This is what powers personalized, follower-aware responses.
About Instagram Products
Turning on Instagram Products indexes your Instagram posts as searchable products, so the agent can look them up and recommend them during a chat — turning your feed into a browsable catalog.
- Requires the Instagram account to be connected first ("Connect Instagram before enabling products"), and the agent must have a knowledge base.
- While indexing runs, the toggle shows Indexing started...; when finished you'll see Indexing completed with progress, plus a Download feed link to inspect what was indexed. If it shows Indexing failed. Try again., re-toggle to retry.
- Once products are enabled, an extra Agentic Search option appears: "Enable AI-powered multi-step product search agent instead of direct search." Turn it on when simple one-shot search isn't finding the right posts and you want the agent to search iteratively.
Comment replies
When Ignore Comments is off, a Reply mode selector controls how the agent handles comments under your posts and reels:
- Custom message — the agent posts the fixed text you type in Quick comment reply, then follows up with a private reply in Direct Messages. Leave the field empty to skip the public comment reply — the agent will still send the private DM.
- AI-generated — the agent writes a contextual reply to each comment. Add an AI instruction (optional) to steer tone and content (for example, "always invite them to DM us for pricing").
Two extra options appear in AI-generated mode:
- Reply in Direct Messages — when a comment is a targeted request (price, location, availability), the agent also sends a private message; simple reactions get a comment reply only.
- Detect the comment's language — the agent detects the language of each comment and replies in that language; when off, it replies in the assistant's primary language.
Notes on the private-reply flow:
- The agent keeps context about which post the comment was on.
- The person receives a message request they can accept to start a conversation.
Audit what the agent replied
The channel shows an Agent replied to N comments counter that opens the Agent comment reply log — each entry lists the date/time, the comment, and the agent's reply. Use Clear log to reset it.
Limitations
- Video file size: Videos larger than 25 MB can't be uploaded directly — they're shared as a link to the video file instead.
- File uploads: Subject to Instagram's own file size and format limits.
- Rate limiting: Instagram may throttle automated responses.
- Re-authentication: Access may need periodic renewal when it expires (see the warning above).
- Content compliance: All automated responses must comply with Instagram's terms of service and community guidelines.