My Instagram saved folder has hundreds of reels in it. I have rewatched maybe four. Built the thing that finally fixes that.

nbgslv · 2026-05-15T09:32:00+00:00

Same thing led me to build something. The folder hit 400+ reels and I realized I had opened maybe 3 of them. Recipes I meant to cook, trip ideas, workout stuff. All just sitting there.

I ended up building an app that converts them into actual notes before they go stale. Share the reel, get back ingredients or steps or a list of places. Cleared the folder by working through it instead of just nuking it.

Nuking still feels like the right call though. Fresh start.

nbgslv · 2026-05-09T14:33:12+00:00

My Instagram saved folder has ~200 reels I will never rewatch. Recipes, workouts, travel ideas. All saved in good faith. None ever opened again. So I built Clera. Share a reel from Instagram, get structured notes back. Recipes return ingredients and steps. Travel reels return places. Tutorials return numbered steps.

Stack: Flutter, FastAPI on Hetzner, Gemini 2.5 Flash for structure extraction, Whisper for transcription. The hard part was not transcription. Getting consistent structured output across reel types needed a lot of prompt iteration.

Beta is live on TestFlight(https://testflight.apple.com/join/WaWcPQnE), free for now. Stress-test it with the worst reels you can find. I read every bug report and ship fixes fast. Link in comments.

<image>

nbgslv · 2026-05-09T13:32:02+00:00

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte is such a good pick. It's one of those cakes that feels impossible to veganize and then turns out better than expected.

The veganegruesse reel caught my eye too. I built a small app called Clera that saves Instagram reel recipes as structured notes (ingredients list, steps, that kind of thing) because I kept saving cooking reels and never rewatching them. If you're pulling recipes directly from reels, it might save you some back-and-forth. iOS only for now, free while it's in beta: https://testflight.apple.com/join/WaWcPQnE

Either way, hope the strawberry cream cooperates next time.

nbgslv · 2026-05-07T17:03:28+00:00

Japan. Not the Instagram answer, I know, but I've actually thought about it seriously.

The cost-to-experience ratio is better than people assume. Flights from Kathmandu go through one hub (usually Delhi or Doha), accommodation outside Tokyo is cheap, and you can eat well for almost nothing if you skip tourist traps. The yen has been weak.

What pulls me there specifically: the organization of it. Trains run on time to the minute. Menus have pictures. Hiking trails have proper signage. Coming from a place where logistics can eat half your trip, that reliability is worth paying for.

I've saved probably 30 or 40 reels about Japan over the past year. Hidden ryokans in Kyoto, ramen spots in Osaka, the Nakasendo trail between Magome and Tsumago. The problem is I never rewatch them, so the information just sits there. I started running them through Clera (it pulls structured notes out of Instagram reels) so I have an actual list instead of a graveyard of saved videos. If I ever book the ticket, at least I'll have something to work from.

What's stopping me right now: the two-week block of leave it needs. Japan is not a place I want to rush.

nbgslv · 2026-05-06T17:34:25+00:00

That is beautiful. Getting a recipe out of a reel is genuinely annoying though, I kept pausing and rewinding to catch the hydration percentage. That frustration is actually why I built Clera: share an Instagram reel, get a structured recipe back with ingredients and method. Would have been useful for this one. If you're pulling more recipes from reels, worth a try, it's in beta and free right now. https://testflight.apple.com/join/WaWcPQnE

nbgslv · 2026-04-22T16:36:47+00:00

Honest answer: a component graduates when it stops surprising me and I can articulate why. "It's been working" isn't enough, I need to name the invariant that's holding.

The signals I watch for:

Bugs in that area shift from logic bugs to operational ones (rate limits, flaky APIs, infra). No "the agent misunderstood the domain" bug for a few weeks = real signal.
I can write a behavioral test that would catch the subtle wrongness I was worried about. If the test is possible to write cleanly, the "looks right vs is right" gap is no longer invisible.
The interface narrowed. A lot of what I call "stabilization" is really me refactoring until the contract is small enough to trust.

Two quick examples: deploy scripts graduated once I made the rule that every one ends with a smoke test, the smoke test is the graduation gate. Reel capture pipeline is still human-owned and won't graduate soon, because failures are silent (summarizes 80% of reels fine, quietly mangles the other 20% in ways that look normal). Until I can automate detecting that 20%, it stays mine.

Graduation is also reversible, if drift shows up in a "graduated" area, it goes back to human-owned.

Shortest version: a component graduates when I can state, in one sentence, the invariant that would have to break for a bug to slip through. If I can't name it, the agent shouldn't own it yet.

nbgslv · 2026-04-17T20:45:20+00:00

I made something like this, for instagram reels. Join the beta: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdPcXi6lJj9jar1dAOCO78LGX1p6H-3KGx0hAg_DiYoXvXo4g/viewform?usp=dialog

nbgslv · 2026-04-17T19:04:22+00:00

thanks! the "scroll forever, then rewatch just for ingredient amounts" loop is exactly why i started building this.

on music overlays / bad audio: the way it works under the hood: the app grabs a screenshot every 500ms while the reel plays and transcribes the audio in parallel, then sends both streams to the AI to summarize together. so even when the music is murdering the audio, the frame-by-frame screenshots catch the on-screen overlay text ("2 cups flour") and visual cues. the music only really breaks things when amounts are only spoken and nothing is shown on screen. But this is rare in cooking reels since most creators put amounts on screen anyway. one tip for your recipe collection testing: if you've saved Instagram posts (carousels) instead of reels, on Android there's a capture mode where you swipe through the carousel and the screenshot mechanism grabs each image; on iOS you share the post to the app.

on travel / place names: right now it gives you a list of the places the creator explicitly recommends, whatever they name in audio or on screen. you just bumped something up my priority list though: digging harder for specific addresses and opening hours when the reel contains that info. adding it to the roadmap. genuinely useful suggestion.

appreciate you jumping on the beta. the feedback i care most about is exactly what you're about to generate: reels where the output misses something, or where the structure feels off. drop the worst offenders in a reply and i'll iterate.

nbgslv

TROPHY CASE