InstaSista
A full-stack AI-powered Instagram SaaS that generates branded carousel posts, animated slides, and Instagram Reels — complete with an AI onboarding wizard, multi-tenant branding, admin panel, and a premium tier. Each account gets a fully customizable experience, from brand guidelines to video export.
Screenshots / app walkthrough
The Challenge / why this exists
The Problem
- Creating quality Instagram content takes hours — writing captions, designing slides, finding images, picking hashtags
- Social media tools charge $20-50/month per brand, making them impractical for small businesses or hobbyists
- Generic AI generators produce bland, off-brand content that doesn't match a company's tone or visual identity
- Static carousel images can't compete with animated Reels — but video creation requires expensive tools and editing skills
The Solution
- Type a topic, get a complete Instagram post in seconds — branded slides, ready-to-post caption, optimized hashtags
- AI-powered onboarding wizard configures the entire brand profile through a conversation — no forms to fill
- Premium accounts unlock animated CSS backgrounds and one-click video export as Instagram Reels (MP4)
- Full admin panel for managing accounts, toggling premium access, impersonating users, and tracking analytics
Tech Stack / what powers it
A pure Node.js application with zero framework dependencies. PostgreSQL for persistence, Gemini AI for content and onboarding, Puppeteer + FFmpeg for video export, and Supabase Storage for media hosting.
Runtime
AI Generation
Database & Storage
Video Pipeline
Design System
Auth & Security
Images
Hosting
Key Features / what it does
AI Onboarding Wizard
New users configure their entire brand through a conversation with Gemini AI. The wizard extracts display name, industry, audience, tone, CTA, accent color, and hashtag strategy from natural dialogue — no forms to fill out.
AI Content Generation
Gemini 2.5 Flash produces complete Instagram posts — carousel slides with headlines, stats, tips, and case studies, plus a full caption with hooks, CTAs, and optimized hashtags. The AI follows each brand's guidelines automatically.
Animated CSS Backgrounds
Premium accounts unlock 5 animated background modes — floating particles, gradient flow, bokeh circles, pulse glow, and aurora. Pure CSS animations, no libraries. All render natively in headless Chrome for video capture.
Video Export (Reels)
One-click export of any post as an Instagram Reel (MP4). Puppeteer captures CSS animations in real time at 15fps, adds cross-fade transitions between slides, and pipes frames to FFmpeg for H.264 encoding. Async with progress polling.
Multi-Tenant Branding
Each account gets a unique visual identity — custom accent color, font, logo, tone of voice, audience definition, and hashtag strategy. The system auto-generates a 5-theme color palette from one hex value using HSL shifts.
Admin Panel
Full admin dashboard with account management, post analytics, daily stats chart, password resets, user impersonation, and premium tier toggling. Admins can edit any account's brand settings directly.
Premium Tier
Two-tier system with premium gating on animated backgrounds and video export. Admin-controlled toggle per account. Premium badge displayed in settings, premium options disabled for free accounts.
Export-Ready Output
Save individual slides or the entire carousel as high-resolution JPG files (1080×1350px), or export as MP4 video for Reels. Copy the caption and hashtags with one click. Ready to paste directly into Instagram.
Smart Background Images
The AI generates a search keyword per slide based on the content. Pexels API fetches matching high-quality portrait photos as slide backgrounds, with a cinematic dark overlay to keep text readable.
Instagram OAuth
Per-account Instagram linking via Meta OAuth (Graph API v22). Each user connects their own Instagram Business account for future automated posting and insights.
Visual Customization
Dark/light modes, 5 rotating color themes per brand, adjustable headline font size, theme selector per slide, and 11 background options (grid, dots, diagonal, noise, solid, image, particles, gradient flow, bokeh, pulse, aurora).
Security Built-In
bcrypt password hashing, cookie sessions with 30-day expiration, in-memory rate limiting (10 gen/hour), XSS escaping on all AI output, CORS restriction, and input validation on all endpoints.
Architecture / how it works
A zero-framework Node.js server backed by PostgreSQL, orchestrating AI generation, image search, dynamic HTML rendering, and server-side video encoding. User accounts, sessions, and post history are all database-driven.
Generation Pipeline
Video Export Pipeline (Premium)
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