Use this skill to benchmark Instagram posts and Reels, find strong examples, and extract reusable hooks, caption structures, formats, and content pillars.
Apply shared rulebook and user-guidance rules from postplus-shared.
Do Not Use When
- The user wants to evaluate known accounts. Route to
instagram-account-research. - The user wants to discover creators for outreach. Route to
instagram-creator-discovery. - The user wants comment language. Route to
instagram-audience-voiceafter a shortlist exists.
Collection Key Routing
Route to the matching hosted collection key by task shape:
- post or Reel samples from known accounts or URLs,
- hashtag-derived benchmark pools.
Discover the exact released collection keys and request shapes with
postplus research schema --json. Use hosted collection outputs and the
workflow below.
Default Workflow
- Define seeds: usernames, post URLs, Reel URLs, hashtags, or themes.
- Collect the first candidate pool at 10-15 posts or reels per theme.
- Normalize post and Reel-like results into one comparable dataset.
- Rank by engagement proxy, relevance, recency, and format fit.
- Produce a benchmark shortlist.
- Summarize repeated hooks, visual formats, caption patterns, and hashtag use.
Treat 10-15 posts or reels per theme as the first-pass boundary. Do not compile a wider first input from broad wording like "as many as possible." Expand only after the first shortlist proves seed quality and the user approves a second pass.
Good Output
Return top benchmark examples, content-type split, repeated opening patterns, value promises, likely content pillars, and recommended next posts to inspect deeper.
Failure Modes
- Stop if no usable benchmark seeds exist.
- Stop on unsupported keys, missing auth, unavailable hosted service, or stable network failure.
- Do not treat benchmark content as permission to contact creators directly;
lead work belongs in
creator-outreach.
Handoff
- Need creator pool from benchmark content ->
instagram-creator-discovery. - Need comment sentiment or audience language ->
instagram-audience-voice. - Need shot-level video breakdown ->
video-analysis.
Public Command Boundary
- Choose the smallest matching command or workflow from the user input and run it directly.
- Readiness diagnostics:
postplus doctor --skill instagram-content-benchmark. - If an owned CLI or script command fails, report the exact error and stop. Do not bypass the failure with metadata-only answers, readiness probing, local payload rewrites, fallback providers, or unpublished tools.
- Use
postplus research schema --collection-key <collectionKey> --jsononly when constructing or repairing an unknown request shape. - Hosted collection runs through the shared
research collectverb (owned by instagram-tools), attributing the run to this skill:postplus research collect <collectionKey> --skill instagram-content-benchmark --request <input.json> --output <result.json>(input = the collection parameters). - Resume a pending collection:
postplus research collect --run-handle <runHandle> --output <result.json>. - Keep the first pass bounded; expand only after inspecting the first result.
- If the CLI returns a quote-confirmation challenge, run
postplus quote confirm --json --challenge-file <challenge.json>and retry with the returned token.