On a schedule

Publish queued Instagram posts on weekdays

One post from your queue goes out every weekday evening, and you get its link.

Runs: On a schedule
Apps: Instagram
AI: Not needed
Access: instagram_business_content_publish

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every weekday at 6pm, publish the next image and caption from my queue to Instagram and email me the link.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

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First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A photographer wants one image or reel going out every day at 9 a.m., but she edits in bursts and often has a week of content ready on Sunday. Posting by hand at the right time each day means setting alarms, and the day she is on a shoot, the post is skipped or goes out at 3 p.m. when her audience is not looking. Inconsistent posting is one of the quickest ways to see reach decline.

At the times you choose, ClickRuntime takes the next item from your stored queue, creates the Instagram media container, publishes it, and emails you the permalink. The queue shortens as items go out, so you can keep loading it with new photos and captions whenever you have them.

It suits creators, small brands and agencies that batch their content and want publishing to follow a steady rhythm.

What you get out of it

A steady rhythm without daily effort
Regular posting keeps an account in front of its followers. With the queue loaded, content goes out on schedule even during travel, illness or a busy week, so your audience sees a dependable feed.
Posts land when your audience is online
You can pick the hours when your followers are most active and let every post go out then. That timing often matters more than the content itself, and doing it by hand means being at your phone at that moment.
Batch creation fits real creative habits
Most creators produce content in bursts. Loading a week or a month of posts in one sitting lets you work in a focused way and avoids breaking your concentration every day to publish.
A confirmation email for every post
Each publication is followed by an email containing the permalink. You can see at a glance that the day's post went live, and a missing email is an early sign that something went wrong with the queue.
The queue shows what is coming
Because upcoming items are stored in order, you always know what will be published next and when the queue will run dry. You can top it up before a gap appears in your calendar.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every weekday at 6pm, ClickRuntime takes the next post from your queue of images and captions.
It uploads the image and caption to your Instagram account and publishes the post.
That post is removed from the queue, so nothing is published twice.
You get an email with the link to the new post and how many are left in the queue.

Before it runs live

Connect Instagram

What you get

RunsOn a schedule

Publish queued Instagram posts on weekdaystoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · Posted to Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/p/C9zT5uV/ New Northwind blend, out today. 6 left in the queue.

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Instagram steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

scheduled_publishing_from_a_queue.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, notify

IG = "https://graph.instagram.com/v21.0"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    queue = state.get("queue") or []  # items: {"image_url": ..., "caption": ...}
    if not queue:
        notify.email_me("Instagram queue is empty", "Add more posts to keep publishing.")
        return {"published": False}
    item, token = queue[0], credentials.connection("instagram", "work")
    container = http.post(f"{IG}/me/media", data={**item, "access_token": token}).json()["id"]
    media_id = http.post(f"{IG}/me/media_publish", data={"creation_id": container, "access_token": token}).json()["id"]
    link = http.get(f"{IG}/{media_id}", params={"fields": "permalink", "access_token": token}).json()["permalink"]
    state.set("queue", queue[1:])
    notify.email_me("Posted to Instagram", f"{link}\n\n{item['caption'][:200]}\n\n{len(queue) - 1} left in the queue.")
    return {"media_id": media_id}

FAQ

Common questions

What happens when the queue is empty?

Nothing is published and no post is invented. At the scheduled time the automation finds no item to take, so it simply does nothing for that run. Add more items before the next scheduled time and publishing continues.

Can I queue Reels as well as photos?

Instagram's API supports publishing both photos and Reels from a public file URL, so a queue entry can describe either one, along with its caption. Tell your AI assistant the type for each item, because a video takes longer for Instagram to process.

How do I add things to the queue?

You tell your AI assistant the image or video URL, the caption and, if you like, the time it should go out, and it stores them in order. You can also ask it to show you the current queue, reorder it or remove an item.

What permissions does it need?

instagram_business_content_publish. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it runs (on a schedule). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Weekly