Instagram Post Growth Delta & Client Report

This private Apify Actor compares two customer-authorized exports of the same Instagram posts. It calculates counter changes inside the capture interval and produces auditable JSON, CSV, and Markdown files. It does not log in to, scrape, or call Instagram.

Use it

Project each authorized upstream row to only shortCode, ownerUsername, type, likesCount, commentsCount, and videoViewCount. Record the real UTC capture time and a non-secret sourceRef. Submit the earlier snapshot as previous and the later snapshot as current; see examples/input.json.

ownerUsername accepts one optional leading @, strips it, and normalizes casing to lowercase. A count of 0 is real zero. -1, null, or an omitted counter is unknown. Both snapshots must use PUBLIC_POST_COUNTERS. The Actor does not retrieve automatically saved state or historic data; keep the previous capture yourself or supply it through an approved upstream automation.

For valid input, the default dataset contains exactly one authoritative OUTPUT record. The private key-value-store logical record keys are OUTPUT, DELTAS.csv, REVIEW_REQUIRED.csv, REPORT.JSON, REPORT.MD, SNAPSHOT_TEMPLATE.json, and MANIFEST.JSON. REPORT.JSON is the compact authoritative output. The manifest retains those logical keys and hashes the actual UTF-8 bytes of every other emitted record.

Interpretation

COMPARABLE means all three counters were observed and none decreased. PARTIAL preserves known metrics while excluding unknown metrics from coverage. A decrease remains a signed delta under COUNTER_DECREASE; it is never described as growth. MISSING_CURRENT means not observed now, not deleted. FIRST_OBSERVED means not observed before, not newly published. Identity and duplicate conflicts are retained for review rather than merged.

This is not a reach, impression, follower, unique-person, ROI, fraud, legal-compliance, or causal creative-winner tool. Customer data is not independently verified. Spreadsheet subtraction is a free alternative.

Local verification

Requires Node.js 22.23.3.

npm ci --ignore-scripts
npm test
npm run typecheck
npm run build
AUTOMATON_CONTAINER_SMOKE=1 node dist/main.js

Normal local storage uses an absolute CRAWLEE_STORAGE_DIR with input at key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json. Local record files follow the content type: JSON records use .json, Markdown records use .md, and CSV records use .csv, without adding a duplicate extension case-insensitively. Thus logical OUTPUT is stored at key_value_stores/default/OUTPUT.json; already suffixed names such as REPORT.JSON, REPORT.MD, and DELTAS.csv are unchanged. This filename mapping is local only; remote record keys and API requests remain unchanged.

The smoke-only path is selected exclusively by AUTOMATON_CONTAINER_SMOKE=1, runs a bounded built-in snapshot through the production comparison and checks its delta/status invariants without storage or network calls, then exits successfully.