Oleg MelnikovYouTube
free resource

Build a viral Instagram page with Claude Code

Download one folder, open it in VS Code, start Claude Code inside it, and a local studio walks you through the seven steps: the idea, the packaging, the first reels, posting, autopilot. Claude Code does the work; you press the buttons.

Get it on GitHub

Setup guide

  1. Open code.visualstudio.com
  2. Press the big blue download button
  3. Open the file it downloads and install it
  4. Open VS Code and leave it open
What is this?

A free editor from Microsoft. You will not write code in it. It is the window everything else happens inside, and the two parts you will use are the folder it has open and the terminal: the menu is Terminal, then New Terminal, and a black panel opens at the bottom.

On a Mac, drag Visual Studio Code into Applications first, then open it from there.

What it actually is

A local app that runs Claude Code inside one folder and fills in your Instagram page as you talk to it: the concept, the username, the profile picture, the bio, the reels.

7
Steps, from idea to monetization
~85
Higgsfield credits per reel
0
Anthropic API keys

Left: the seven steps. Middle: a chat, which is Claude Code working inside the folder, with a button for every action. Right: your page, as cards that fill themselves from the files Claude writes. Your Higgsfield balance sits at the top, because that is the one thing here that spends money.

Every rule I learned building my own page is in the folder, and Claude Code reads them on every turn. You never have to.

The seven steps of a viral page

Four of these happen in the studio. The last three happen on Instagram, once the account has earned them. Open the ones you want.

  1. 1Choose the idea

    One document that says what the page is, who it is for and how it looks. Everything else is generated from it, so this is the step to spend an hour on.

    The test for a concept: the subject and the place are recognised in under a second, it repeats as a series without getting boring, and it has one look you can describe in five lines. Mine is iconic cars in iconic places, shot like stills from a film that was never made. It ships in the folder as the worked example and the shape to copy.

  2. 2Pick the vibe (optional)

    A handful of stills that look the way the page should look. The default set is the one this system was built on; drop your own on the References card if you want a different world. Claude writes the look down in ten lines so every image prompt can match it.

  3. 3Build the packaging

    Three things, and all three matter more than people think. A username that is actually free: the studio proposes sixty and checks them against Instagram’s own signup form, because a profile scraper calls held handles “available” and you find out at signup. A profile picture made from your headshot in the same look as the content, so the avatar and the grid read as one world. A bio in lowercase, one idea per line, no hype.

    The Packaging card shows a pixel-level clone of the Instagram profile page with your draft in it, so you judge the packaging before anything exists on Instagram.

  4. 4Make the first three reels, improving the prompts after each

    A reel is four frames and four clips of five seconds: an opener, a play, a peak, a funny ending. For each one the studio plans the frames, finds a reference photo, makes sixteen candidate frames and shows you the contact sheet, you pick four, it makes the clips, finds three tracks, stitches the reel to the beat and cuts a cover.

    The point of doing three before posting is not the three reels. It is that after each one you say what is wrong and the prompts change. The first reel is never the good one.

  5. 5Create the account and start posting

    Create the account with the handle, picture and bio from the card. Post through the Edits app, Instagram’s own editing app, for the first weeks: a new account posting from Instagram’s own tool seems to get a kinder start, and it costs nothing to do it that way. One reel a day at the same hour. Music is added at upload, never baked into the file.

    Then keep going. Paste what you see (views, saves, what people say) into the chat and it tells you what to change in the next series.

  6. 6After 100k views: put it on autopilot

    With some reputation on the account, publishing goes on a schedule through Blotato, and an improvement loop takes over the judging: Apify scrapes your own reels’ numbers, Gemini watches the best and the worst clip by clip, and the report says exactly what to change in the prompts. The studio builds both with you when you get there; they are not worth having before the account has earned them.

  7. 7After 1M views: monetize

    Referral links that fit the audience, a digital product that fits the concept, or a service. Not before: a bio that sells on day one costs the reach that would have made the selling worth anything.

What it costs

Claude
Pro, $20 a month. The studio runs on your plan, no API key
Higgsfield
About 85 credits per reel: 16 frames at 1.5, 4 draft clips at about 15
Apify
Cents: a cent per username check, a few cents per reference or music run
Gemini
Optional, free tier, for the motion analysis in the autopilot

credits

Profile picture (3 variants)
about 5
One reel
about 85
The three launch reels
about 250

time

Profile picture (3 variants)
5 min
One reel
40 min
The three launch reels
an afternoon

Draft-quality clips. Finalising a clip to 1080p is a separate Higgsfield call and costs more; do it only for the reels you post.

The rules that make the reels work

These are in the folder, so you do not have to remember them. They are the difference between a reel that looks like a film still and one that looks like AI.

The six rules
  1. Recognition in the first second. The subject and the place readable in frame one of clip one. The landmark is never revealed later.
  2. One look. A twilight sky, dark warm ground, one hot light that belongs to the subject, coarse grain, nothing tack sharp. Crisp detail is what makes AI images look fake.
  3. The subject is always moving. Fast and straight, or sliding. Never standing. The wheels visibly spinning in every clip; a moving car with frozen rims is rejected on sight.
  4. One camera behaviour per clip. Locked, tracking alongside, following, or one pan. No orbits, no jumps, nothing airborne. Real-time speed with a number in the prompt.
  5. Something near the lens and something near the subject in every frame, so the clip has layers that move. A distant landmark alone gives no motion.
  6. Four clips, cut on the beat. Opener, play, peak, funny ending. The music’s drop lands on the cut into the play.

The honest quality line

The first reel is not the good one. The system is built around that: you judge each reel in plain words and the prompts change, so the third reel is made with everything the first two taught you. Expect to throw the first one away.

What it is not

  • Not free. A Claude plan and Higgsfield credits. The credits are the real cost, and the studio keeps them in front of you.
  • Not instant. Forty minutes a reel, most of it waiting for the generator. Press the button and go and do something else.
  • Not a guarantee of views. It makes the page that gives you the best shot: recognisable in a second, one look, consistent posting. Whether people watch is still the idea.
  • Not a video editor. It generates and stitches. For cutting your own footage, Reel Studio is the one.

Never used claude code? Start here, and this is what the plans cost. The research half, deciding what the next series should be from what already went viral, is the reels system.

If you get stuck

The things that actually go wrong, taken from the questions people ask under the video.

The terminal says “command not found: claude”

Installing the Claude Code extension in VS Code does not give you the Claude terminal command. The extension keeps a private copy for its own chat panel. That catches almost everyone, and it is not a broken setup.

To get the command, install Claude Code itself:

# macOS or Linux
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

# Windows PowerShell
irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

Then close the terminal window completely and open a new one. Skipping that is the second most common reason it still says not found. Check it worked with Claude --version.

Still not found on a Mac? Your PATH is missing the folder, so run these two lines:

echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

Claude doctor prints a full health report if you are still stuck. And if you would rather never touch a terminal, the Claude Code desktop app does the same job with buttons.

One thing worth knowing before you install anything: Claude Code needs a paid Claude plan (Pro or higher) or an API account. The free claude.ai plan does not include it, so it can install perfectly and still refuse to sign you in.

What does this actually cost to run?

Claude Code comes with a Claude subscription: Pro at $20/month, or Max from $100/month for five or twenty times the usage. Usage is included, there is no per-run charge. The free plan does not include Claude Code at all.

Inside Claude Code, /status tells you whether you are on a subscription or an API key, and /usage shows how close you are to your plan limit.

Prices and free tiers move. These were checked in August 2026.

Do I also need to pay for the API keys?

Yes, and it is a separate bill. Mixing the two up is what causes most of the confusion.

The API keys the pipelines use are pay per token, prepaid, and completely separate. A Claude subscription does not fund an API key.

The free tiers genuinely cover trying this out: Apify's free plan includes $5 of usage a month, and a scrape of a few dozen profiles costs cents. Google AI Studio has a free tier for the analysis.

Prices and free tiers move. These were checked in August 2026.

Is --dangerously-skip-permissions safe?

It does exactly what the name says: it turns off the ask-before-acting prompt, so Claude can edit files and run commands on your machine without checking with you each time. That is why it is fast, and that is the whole risk.

The honest version: in a project folder like this one, where you know what is inside and nothing valuable is nearby, it is a reasonable trade. Pointed at your whole home folder, or at a repo you have not read, it is not.

The safer default is to drop the flag. Claude "/prime" does the same work and asks first. You approve a few things at the start, then it stops asking about the same kinds of actions.

Questions people ask

What does a viral Instagram page cost to build this way
A Claude Pro plan at $20 a month, Higgsfield credits (about 85 per reel, so roughly 250 for the three launch reels), and cents on Apify for username checks, references and music. No Anthropic API key: Claude Code runs on the subscription.
Do I need to know how to code
No. You install VS Code and Claude Code, open one folder, make one small file with your Apify key in it, paste one sentence, and from then on you talk to a chat and press buttons. Everything technical is done by Claude Code inside the folder. If something breaks, you paste the error at it and it fixes its own setup.
How long does one reel take
About 40 minutes, most of it waiting for Higgsfield. The studio shows what it is doing, how long it has been working, and how long the step usually takes. You are needed twice: to pick four frames from the contact sheet and to say what you think at the end.
Why post through the Edits app
Edits is Instagram's own editing app. A brand new account posting from Instagram's own tool seems to get a kinder start than one uploading finished files, and it costs nothing to do it that way for the first weeks. Once the account has traction, publishing moves to Blotato on a schedule.
Can I use my own idea instead of cars
That is the point. Step one is choosing your idea; the cars-in-places concept ships as the worked example and the shape to copy. The rules that make the reels work (recognition in the first second, one look, the subject always moving, the four-clip structure) carry over to any subject.
Is the AI content labelled
Yes. Every post carries Instagram's AI content label in the packaging, and the account is positioned as stills from films that were never made, not as photography. Hiding it would not survive the first comment anyway.
Does it work with Codex
The folder's instructions are agent-agnostic, so Codex can work in it from the same files. The studio itself runs Claude Code headlessly, which is why this page leads with Claude Code.