Instagram scraper

Skill gooseworks-ai/goose-skills/skills/social/capabilities/instagram-scraper

Library of Growth & GTM skills + data APIs for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor to run ads, social, content, lead gen, seo and data scraping

Install

npx -y skills add gooseworks-ai/goose-skills --skill instagram-scraper

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What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Get Instagram profiles, posts, and reels

SKILL.md

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Instagram Scraper

Setup

Read your credentials from ~/.gooseworks/credentials.json:

export GOOSEWORKS_API_KEY=$(python3 -c "import json;print(json.load(open('$HOME/.gooseworks/credentials.json'))['api_key'])")
export GOOSEWORKS_API_BASE=$(python3 -c "import json;print(json.load(open('$HOME/.gooseworks/credentials.json')).get('api_base','https://api.gooseworks.ai'))")

If ~/.gooseworks/credentials.json does not exist, tell the user to run: npx gooseworks login

All endpoints use Bearer auth: -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOSEWORKS_API_KEY"

Scrape public Instagram data including profiles, posts, and reels.

When to Use

User asks about Instagram content
User wants to see posts from an account
Social media research

How It Works

Uses the Scrape Creators API via Orthogonal to scrape Instagram data.

Usage

Get User Profile & Posts

curl -s -X POST $GOOSEWORKS_API_BASE/v1/proxy/orthogonal/run \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOSEWORKS_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"api":"scrapecreators","path":"/v1/instagram/profile","query":{"handle":"openai"}}'

<details> <summary>curl equivalent</summary>

curl -X POST "https://api.orth.sh/v1/run" \

  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"api":"scrapecreators","path":"/v1/instagram/profile","query":{"handle":"openai"}}'

</details>

Get Individual Post/Reel

curl -s -X POST $GOOSEWORKS_API_BASE/v1/proxy/orthogonal/run \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOSEWORKS_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"api":"scrapecreators","path":"/v1/instagram/post","query":{"url":"https://instagram.com/p/abc123"}}'

Get Basic Profile by User ID

curl -s -X POST $GOOSEWORKS_API_BASE/v1/proxy/orthogonal/run \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOSEWORKS_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"api":"scrapecreators","path":"/v1/instagram/basic-profile","query":{"userId":"12345"}}'

Parameters

Profile

handle (required) - Instagram handle (without @)
trim (optional) - Set to "true" for a trimmed response

Post/Reel

url (required) - Instagram post or reel URL
trim (optional) - Set to "true" for a trimmed response

Basic Profile

userId (optional) - Instagram user ID

Response

Profile includes:

Username, display name, bio
Follower/following counts
Recent posts with captions, URLs, engagement metrics
Profile image

Post includes:

Post caption
Image/video URLs
Like count
Comment count
Timestamp

Examples

User: "What's OpenAI posting on Instagram?"

curl -s -X POST $GOOSEWORKS_API_BASE/v1/proxy/orthogonal/run \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOSEWORKS_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"api":"scrapecreators","path":"/v1/instagram/profile","query":{"handle":"openai"}}'

User: "Get details on this Instagram post"

curl -s -X POST $GOOSEWORKS_API_BASE/v1/proxy/orthogonal/run \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOSEWORKS_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"api":"scrapecreators","path":"/v1/instagram/post","query":{"url":"https://instagram.com/p/abc123"}}'

Error Handling

success: false — the API may temporarily fail; retry after a few seconds
Private accounts cannot be accessed — no workaround
Rate limiting may cause failures on rapid requests — add delays between calls

Tips

Private accounts cannot be accessed
Remove @ from handles
API may return errors for rate limiting - retry after a few seconds