My agent screened my 50 unread Instagram DMs and left them unread

He asked the AI to screen his unread Instagram threads one morning. It came back with 50 unread, looked at the threads he named across his Primary, General and request folders, and told him what people had sent. The unread count was still 50 afterward, so nothing showed as read for him or for the senders.

How it works

Connect Instagram and Instagram Messages
Ask the AI to screen unread threads
The AI reads the named threads across all folders
Reports what each person sent
Unread count stays at 50

Why it’s worth knowing

It reads the messages without marking them read, which is the one thing opening the app yourself cannot do.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on reddit.com. See the original ↗

Upgraded prompt

A ready-to-use prompt for this idea, built from research on what makes AI agents do the job right: who the AI should be, the exact steps, and a check to make sure it was done the way you wanted.

1Who the AI should be

2The prompt, with the steps

3The check when it’s done

Upgraded prompts are coming soon.

Try next

Life adminHe fought an eight month insurance dispute with AI as his co-counsel and won $10,250$10,250 Life adminHe runs his dad's work orders and meeting scheduling out of his dad's inbox Life adminSpark Sorted a Real Inbox, Archived 9 Threads and Flagged a Spam Comment Unprompted Life adminSecurity-review a suspicious email that passed every check

Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.