Schedule Instagram Stories Automatically (API and Claude)

Stories keep you in front of the followers you already have: they sit at the top of the app and most people tap through them every day. The problem is consistency. You can schedule Instagram Stories through the Creator OS API, CLI, or by asking Claude, so a Story goes up every morning whether or not you remember. One field does it: contentType: "story".

  morning-1.jpg  morning-2.mp4  morning-3.jpg
         |             |              |
         v             v              v
   08:00 Story    12:00 Story    18:00 Story     (contentType: "story")
         \_____________|______________/
                       |
             gone after 24h, like any Story

How to post a Story

From Claude

With the Instagram MCP server:

• “Post story-1.jpg as an Instagram Story tomorrow at 8am.”
• “Schedule these 7 images as Stories, one each morning at 8am next week.”
• “Post this video as a Story and tag @partnerbrand.”

From the API

POST /v1/posts
{
  "media": ["med_story_image"],
  "platforms": ["instagram"],
  "post_type": "story",
  "schedule_at": "2026-10-10T08:00:00",
  "timezone": "America/New_York"
}

The simple form with post_type: "story" routes it as a Story for you. With per-account targets, put contentType: "story" in the Instagram target’s options.

What works in Stories through the API

• Images and videos (vertical 9:16 looks best).
• User tags, with optional position.
• Scheduling and AI-generated labels.
• Muting a video’s audio (muteAudio).

What doesn’t

Instagram’s API publishes the media only. These are app-only:

• Interactive stickers: polls, questions, quizzes, link stickers, music.
• Text and drawings added on top in the app. Bake text into the image or video instead.
• Collaborators, location tags and the paid partnership label on Stories (the API rejects these for Stories).
• First comments (Stories have no comments).

Practical answer: put the text and call to action in the design, schedule the Story, and add a link sticker by hand on the one Story per day that needs it.

Facebook Stories too

Facebook Pages take Stories the same way (contentType: "story", no caption). One call can post the same Story to Instagram and your Facebook Page. See the Facebook MCP guide.

A daily Story routine that runs itself

1. Morning: a behind-the-scenes photo or a quick tip card.
2. Midday: reshare-style card pointing to your latest Reel (“new Reel up”).
3. Evening: a result, testimonial, or question card (answers come in as DMs).

Make the week’s cards in one sitting, then: “schedule these as Stories, 3 a day at 8am, 12pm and 6pm.” Answer the DMs they generate from one inbox: all your DMs in one place.

Prefer to watch? The KevBuildsApps YouTube channel walks through builds like this one, start to finish.

Get started

Creator OS plans start at $19.99/month with the API, MCP server and CLI. Sign up, connect Instagram, and schedule tomorrow’s Stories tonight.