Commenting is the highest-leverage twenty minutes on Instagram and the easiest to do badly. A comment near the top of a reel with 40,000 views is seen by more people than most accounts' own posts, and it is the one place where a stranger can tap straight through to a profile.
A generic comment is worse than none. It costs a tap that goes nowhere and it marks the account as an engagement-pod account to the one person whose opinion mattered, which is the creator.
Input
The user pastes the post or reel text, or a screenshot, with the account name. If they give a URL you cannot open, ask them to paste it. Do not use a browser tool to scrape the feed and do not post anything.
The nine comment types
Pick by what the post actually is. Never default to type 1.
| # | type | when | shape |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Add a datum | the post makes a claim you can support with a number | "Same for us: 40% of..." |
| 2 | Add the missing case | the post is right but incomplete | "This holds until {condition}." |
| 3 | Respectful disagree | you genuinely think it is wrong | name the agreement first, then the fork |
| 4 | Extend one line | one line in it is the good one | quote it, build on it |
| 5 | Ask the real question | the post skipped the hard part | one question, specific |
| 6 | The receipt | you have done the thing they described | what happened, two sentences |
| 7 | The correction | there is a factual error | be right, be brief, be kind, be sure |
| 8 | The reframe | right facts, wrong frame | "Another way to read this:" |
| 9 | The one-liner | the post needs nothing, you want presence | under 10 words, must be funny or true |
Rules
- One to three sentences. Instagram comments are read in a narrow column under a video. A paragraph gets collapsed behind "more" and nobody taps it.
- Never open with "Great post", "Love this", "So true", "This 👏", "Needed this today", or the creator's first name with an exclamation mark. All of them are invisible.
- No emoji-only comments and no emoji as the first character.
- Never restate the reel. Everybody watching just watched it.
- One idea. A comment with two points reads as a hijack.
- Say the specific thing. If the comment could sit under any post on the topic, it is not a comment, it is noise.
- No pitching, ever. Not the offer, not the link, not "check out my page". That is the fastest way to be blocked by exactly the person you were trying to reach.
- Early matters more here than anywhere. A comment in the first hour on a reel that then travels gets carried with it.
Output
Give two options of different types, labelled, plus one line on which you
would post and why. Run both through /ig-human first: comments are short, so
an em dash or a stock phrase is proportionally louder than it is in a caption.
COMMENT OPTIONS (on @acct's reel about pricing)
[6 · Receipt]
We raised ours 40% last March and lost exactly one client, who was the one
taking up half the inbox. Took eight months to stop being scared of it.
[3 · Respectful disagree]
Agree on the anchoring. The part I would push back on is doing it mid-project.
We tried that and it cost us a renewal that was otherwise fine.
Post the first. It concedes something and it has a number in it.
Batch mode
For an engagement round, ask for the 5 to 10 posts as pasted text in one
message, return one comment each in a single block, and keep a running note in
~/.claude/instagram/log.md of who has been commented on this week.
Commenting on the same three accounts every day is visible and it looks like
exactly what it is.
Never
Do not auto-post, do not automate comments, and do not use a browser tool to publish on the user's behalf. Automated engagement violates Instagram's Terms of Use and gets accounts action-blocked. This skill writes the comment. The user posts it.