Snob CLI

An Instagram CLI: a client for the terminal, with extra utilities, media downloads and output ready for AI agents.

snob tells you who does not follow you back, browses profiles, stories, highlights, posts and reels, downloads their photos and videos, and watches an account over time to report what changed. It signs in as you and sends its requests from a Chrome, Edge, Brave or Chromium already on your machine, at a human pace. It only ever changes two things, follow and unfollow, one account at a time and after asking; it never marks a story as seen.

Install

Windows (Scoop):

scoop bucket add snob https://github.com/dennisgr7/snob-cli
scoop install snob

macOS and Linux (Homebrew):

brew tap dennisgr7/snob https://github.com/dennisgr7/snob-cli
brew install snob

Debian and Ubuntu: the .deb for your architecture is on the releases page.

sudo apt install ./snob-v<version>-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.deb

Without a package manager:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/@raw/dennisgr7/snob-cli/main/packaging/install.sh | sh

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dennisgr7/snob-cli/main/packaging/install.ps1 | iex

From source (Rust and a C compiler):

cargo install --locked --git https://github.com/dennisgr7/snob-cli snob-cli

Builds exist for Windows 11 and Linux on x86_64 and ARM64, and macOS on Apple Silicon. Everything that talks to Instagram needs a Chromium-based browser installed; no window is ever shown.

Getting started

snob login      # sign in through a browser snob opens, or paste a sessionid
snob whoami

Over SSH, where no window can reach you, snob login --remote prints an ssh command that opens a tunnel from your computer and a link to open there: you log in on that page, in snob's browser seen from afar, and the session stays on the machine snob runs on.

snob never sees your password when you log in in a window or paste a session, and it never reads your own browser's cookies. With --remote what you type on that page is passed through snob to its browser, and kept nowhere.

Commands

snob unfollowers                 # you follow them, they do not follow you back
snob fans                        # they follow you, you do not follow them
snob friends                     # you follow each other
snob followers someone           # any list, yours or another account's
snob profile someone             # the profile page: counts, bio, mutuals, highlights
snob pfp someone                 # the profile picture at full size
snob stories someone -d all      # save every story an account has up
snob highlights someone 2 -d all # save everything in its second highlight
snob posts someone               # the posts on its grid
snob post <link> -d all          # one post by its link, every photo and video in it
snob reel <link> -d all          # the same for a reel
snob fetch <cdn-address>         # one file by its address, no account needed
snob follow someone
snob unfollow someone
snob watch                       # keep watching on a schedule, report changes
snob status                      # budget left, cooldown, stored lists, agents; sends nothing
snob jobs                        # walks an agent left running, and "snob jobs cancel <id>"

On a terminal most commands open a full-screen view you move through with the arrow keys. snob --help and snob <command> --help list everything.

Scripts, automation and AI agents

Every command can print instead of opening a view, in a stable form a program can read:

• --format json|ndjson|csv|xlsx|md|table and -o <file> for anything that prints a list or a document; --json for status commands such as whoami and status, and for follow and unfollow, whose object says what happened in one word (followed, requested, already_following, ...).
• snob status --budget says what can still be sent today, for no request, and exits 5 while the account is cooling down. --dry-run on a list command says what its walks would cost against that, and sends nothing.
• -o - is standard output: a list as with no -o, and a single downloaded file, as in snob reel <link> -d 1 -o - | ffmpeg -i - ....
• --no-interactive always prints. Down a pipe this is the default, and the default format is JSON.
• -y answers the one confirmation a command may ask, in advance.
• --max-wait <duration> stops a command, with exit 130, rather than let it wait longer than that for the request budget; a list stopped this way continues where it left off next time.
• Exit codes are stable: 0 worked, 1 failed, 2 bad command line, 3 log in again, 4 the account needs verifying, 5 rate limited or cooling down, 130 stopped. When the output was going to be JSON, a failure is also one JSON object on the last line of standard error.
• snob watch --webhook <url> posts each report as JSON; --json writes them as lines instead.
• snob mcp is an MCP server for AI agents, on standard input and output: the status, the lists and profiles, and with --allow-writes follow and unfollow. Those, and walking another account's lists, run only after a yes for that one call: asked in the client when it can show a form, or put to you by the agent in the chat (--confirm-in-chat none|lists|all says what that may cover; all by default). snob cannot tell whether that yes was yours or the agent's, so keep the writes on "ask" in the client's tool permissions. Each call runs one snob command, under the same budget and cooldown as the terminal. Calls run a few at a time, and only one that can reach Instagram: another comes back busy rather than waiting. A long list comes back a page at a time (up to 200 accounts, without their pictures' addresses), and the later pages are handed back from what was already read, sending nothing; one given a limit still says how many accounts the whole list has. snob status --agents lists what agents were told yes to in the last 24 hours, and agents may make at most ten follows and unfollows a day on the account (--max-writes-per-day to change it, up to 99); what you type in a terminal is not counted. A list the agent asks for that has to be walked runs as a job: answered in the call when it ends within wait_seconds (20 by default, at most 50), and otherwise handed back as a job the agent asks about with snob_job, lists with snob_jobs and stops with snob_job_cancel. A job waits at most an hour for the request budget unless the server was given --max-wait. One runs at a time per account, listed by snob jobs and in snob status, stopped like Ctrl+C by snob jobs cancel <id>, and stopped by snob logout and snob purge before they remove anything. A client that supports MCP Tasks gets the job as a task instead, which it polls and can cancel on its own. snob mcp config claude-code (or claude-desktop, codex, cursor, vscode) prints what to add to that client's configuration. snob mcp key new makes the key a client presents to reach the server over the network and keeps it in the system keyring, printing it once to your terminal; show names it by a fingerprint, revoke removes it, and on a machine with no keyring SNOB_MCP_KEY in the server's environment takes its place (snob mcp key new --env makes one for it, keeping it nowhere). snob mcp --listen 127.0.0.1:8750 serves the same over HTTP on this machine's loopback, for a tunnel of your own (ssh -L, cloudflared, a VPN) to reach from elsewhere: it refuses any address that is not loopback and any request without the key (Authorization: Bearer), and a yes given in the chat covers only reading lists unless --confirm-in-chat all. A client on the stateless revision of MCP has no session, so a chat yes it is handed is bound to the call alone, and any client with the key may redeem it once. TLS ends at the tunnel, whose provider sees the key and every answer, other people's names and lists included; put an access layer in front where the tunnel offers one. The server does not prove itself to its clients: they send the key to whatever answers on the port, so another user of the machine who listens there while snob is not running is handed it. Serve it only on a machine where nobody else can run code, and if the port could have been taken, revoke the key and make a new one (for a key in SNOB_MCP_KEY, put a new one there instead: revoking touches only the keyring). On Linux and macOS, snob mcp --listen socket closes that gap: it serves on a socket in snob's private data directory (mcp.sock, 0600) that only you and root can connect to and nobody else can take, and the tunnel reaches it there (ssh -L 8750:<path> from the far end, or cloudflared's unix:<path> service); startup prints the path. snob mcp config codex --remote https://your-tunnel/mcp (or any other client) prints what a client needs to reach that server: no command and no key. The client sends the key from SNOB_MCP_TOKEN in its own environment; never set SNOB_MCP_KEY there, since it is the server's and replaces the key of any snob started where it is set. Claude Desktop and claude.ai take the address as a custom connector instead (Customize > Connectors), which they reach from Anthropic's side, so it is the tunnel's https address, with the key under the form's Request headers where your organization has them. After upgrading snob, reconnect the server in the client: a server whose binary changed under it refuses every call.

Staying a light client

There is no official API for most of this, so snob uses the same web API instagram.com uses, signed in as you. That is outside Instagram's Terms of Use, and the usual consequence is that Instagram asks the account to verify itself. snob keeps to modest volumes, sends only the web app's own requests, and stops at the first sign of push-back. Use it from the connection you normally browse from.

To remove everything snob stored on the machine, sessions included, run snob purge before uninstalling.

License

MIT.