# Publish posts, carousels, Reels and stories

> Optional Instagram publishing from the chat: turning it on and off, photo posts and carousels up to 10 images, cropping, stories, Reels and video stories.

Source: https://saypage.ai/docs/publishing · Updated October 5, 2026

Your assistant can publish on your Instagram for you: photo posts, carousels, stories, Reels and video stories. Hand over the photos and the idea; it writes the caption, shows you everything, and posts once you approve.

**Publishing is optional and off by default.** Pages, automations, comments and insights all work without it.

## Turn it on

1. Ask your assistant: "I'd like you to publish on Instagram for me."
2. It gives you a link to Instagram's own consent screen. Your assistant cannot turn publishing on itself: only you can, by approving there.
3. Approve, then tell your assistant it's done.

## Turn it off

Ask your assistant to turn publishing off, or use **Turn off** next to your Instagram account on [your account page](https://saypage.ai/account). It takes effect at once and stays off until you approve it again on Instagram. Everything else keeps working.

## Photo posts and carousels

- **A post** has one image; **a carousel** has 2 to 10.
- **Shape:** feed images between 4:5 (portrait) and 1.91:1 (landscape) go as they are. Others are cropped, keeping the center, the top, the bottom, the left or the right; or padded with a background color to keep the whole image. Your assistant previews each image exactly as Instagram will get it and checks that no headline or face is cut off.
- **Carousels:** Instagram crops every image of a carousel to the first image's shape.
- **Caption:** up to 2,200 characters, 30 hashtags and 20 @mentions. Your assistant can write it, in your voice, and add alt text to each image for accessibility.
- **Stories:** one image, no caption.

Your assistant prepares the post first (nothing is public yet), shows you the final caption and images, and only publishes when you say so, within 24 hours of preparing it.

## Reels and video stories

1. **Upload the video:** MP4 or MOV, up to 300 MB, from the same upload link as photos (or straight from your computer in Claude Code). See [Images and uploads](https://saypage.ai/docs/images).
2. **Agree on the caption** with your assistant. For a Reel, it can also pick the cover frame and whether the Reel shows in your feed as well as the Reels tab.
3. **Publish.** Once you say go, it goes out by itself: SayPage hands the video to Instagram and publishes it as soon as Instagram has processed it, usually within a few minutes. It cannot be stopped.

Instagram takes videos from 3 seconds to 15 minutes; a story is 60 seconds and 100 MB at most, with no caption. A minute or two later, your assistant can tell you whether the video is published (with its link) or why it failed.

SayPage deletes its copy of a video as soon as it is published, and deletes a video that is not published within an hour of its upload: publish it in the same conversation.

## Limits

- **SayPage cannot delete a published post.** You can, in the Instagram app.
- **Instagram limits how many posts an account publishes a day.** Your assistant sees the remaining quota.
- **If publishing fails,** your assistant checks your recent posts before trying again, so nothing is posted twice.
- Publishing works on the Instagram account connected to SayPage only.

## Next

- [Insights and page statistics](https://saypage.ai/docs/insights)
- [Privacy and safety](https://saypage.ai/docs/privacy-and-safety)