I built an AI agent for Instagram DMs. Looking for feedback on the idea
I won’t name or link what we’re building because I’m genuinely looking for feedback, not trying to promote.
About a year ago, we started building a general AI agent builder, kind of like n8n but for AI agents. We quickly learned that most people didn’t really want an “agent builder.” It was too abstract.
Then we pivoted into chatbots, but people didn’t only want something on their website. We added Instagram and WA.
But then we became too broad again, so we narrowed down to Instagram DMs.... (lol)
Right now we’re building something similar to ManyChat in terms of core features: comment-to-DM, keyword flows, follow-ups, flow builder, automations, etc. We also added an AI agent layer that can understand conversations, answer questions, recommend Shopify products, qualify leads, and hand over to a human.
But AI replies are more expensive to run, and we’re not huge Instagram users ourselves, so we’re trying to understand how people actually manage DMs before we keep building too far in our own bubble.
For those of you who use Instagram for business/clients/content:
- What kind of account do you run? Fitness coach, creator, ecommerce brand, agency, local business, SaaS, something else?
- Roughly how many DMs do you get per day or week?
- Are you currently using anything to automate DMs? ManyChat, Meta tools, Zapier, manual templates, VAs, something else?
- If you use automation, what do you automate? Comment replies, lead magnets, FAQs, bookings, product questions, follow-ups?
- If you don’t automate, why not? Too risky, too expensive, too hard to set up, feels spammy, not enough volume?
- Would you trust AI to reply to your DMs, or would you only trust fixed flows/templates?
- If you’ve used ManyChat, what do you like or dislike about it?
- What would actually make DM automation useful enough that you’d pay for it?
I’m trying to understand how people here actually handle Instagram DMs and where the real pain is and if this is worth continuing or just calling it quits!
Any ideas/feedback is welcome