Snob CLI

An Instagram 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://raw.githubusercontent.com/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 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

Your password never goes through snob, and it never reads your own browser's cookies.

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; sends nothing

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.
• 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.
• 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.

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.