Connect your Instagram

Instagram is one of the densest pictures of your voice you have: the captions you write, the formats that land, and and how your audience responds. Connecting it brings your posts and their engagement numbers into byline.

What comes in

When you connect Instagram, byline reads your own account and keeps a memory of it:

• Your feed posts, reels and carousels, with their captions as your written voice.
• The like and comment counts Instagram includes with each post.

byline does not import the comments and replies on your posts.

Richer Instagram analytics—reach, saves, shares, watch time and audience demographics—are not part of the connection yet. Their absence never blocks your archive or ideas; byline uses the posts and counts it genuinely has rather than filling gaps with guesses.

byline only ever reads your own account. It never scrapes anyone else.

What stays out

Some things are deliberately left alone:

• Your direct messages. Private conversations stay private.
• Your Stories archive.
• Posting or publishing. byline reads, it never writes to your account on your behalf.
• Other people's accounts, hashtag feeds and discovery. This is your work, not a scraper.

Connect your account

You will need a Professional account (Business or Creator). Switching is free inside Instagram's own settings and takes a minute.

1. Open the Connect page in byline and choose Instagram.
2. Sign in with Instagram once and approve access. byline never sees or stores your password.
3. byline queues its first read. Eligible posts appear as processing completes, subject to your plan's allowance and available Instagram access; a connection does not mean every post is already in memory.

To use the processed work from an AI tool, that host must support a custom remote MCP connection. Add the link below through its current remote MCP flow, authorize byline, select the right workspace, and ask explicitly for byline context. A saved or expired grant may require reconnecting; connection alone does not guarantee the host will use the profile:

https://byline.fyi/api/mcp

How it stays fresh

You connect once, and byline keeps the picture current on its own:

• New posts are pulled in on a regular schedule, so your reels and captions show up without you lifting a finger.
• Like and comment counts are refreshed every day.

If you want another read, choose Resync on Sources. It queues work rather than making new posts immediately searchable. In production, the per-source cooldown is about 30 minutes, with shared limits too.

If the connection drops

Instagram sign-ins expire after about sixty days. byline quietly renews yours in the background, so in the normal run of things you never notice.

If a connection lapses because you changed your password or revoked access inside Instagram, you will see it flagged on the Connect page. The imported content stays in byline while the source is waiting for you to reconnect.

Choosing Disconnect is different. It permanently deletes the posts, any previously imported comments, counts and any historical performance records imported through that source, and frees the source slot. Reconnecting later starts a fresh import of whatever Instagram still makes available.

Comments are not imported

byline no longer imports comments from Instagram. Comments you had imported earlier stay in your workspace, apart from your own writing. They can still inform Ideas, and byline never blends commenters' words into your voice profile. Your captions and posts define how you sound. Your voice stays yours.