Instagram Direct Messages from your terminal

cursorful-video-1768798451015.mp4

Architecture

flowchart TB
    subgraph CLI["CLI (Rust)"]
        commands["login | logout | status | me | inbox | open<br/>search | thread | send | reply | chat"]
    end

    subgraph Server["Server (Python/FastAPI)"]
        api["http://localhost:8000"]
    end

    subgraph Instagram["Instagram API"]
        ig["Instagram Services"]
    end

    CLI -->|"HTTP + RSA Encrypted Password"| Server
    Server -->|"instagrapi"| Instagram

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Security

• RSA-2048 encryption for password transmission
• OAEP padding with SHA-256 (industry standard)
• Server generates key pair on first run (stored in .keys/)
• CLI fetches public key, encrypts password before sending

RSA Encryption Flow

sequenceDiagram
    participant CLI as CLI (Rust)
    participant Server as Server (Python)

    CLI->>Server: 1. GET /auth/public-key
    Server-->>CLI: RSA public key (PEM)

    Note over CLI: 2. Encrypt password<br/>(RSA-OAEP + SHA-256)

    CLI->>Server: 3. POST /auth/login<br/>{ encrypted_password: "base64..." }

    Note over Server: 4. Decrypt with<br/>private key

    Server-->>CLI: Login response

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CLI Commands

Authentication

Command	Description
ig login	Interactive login (prompts for username & password)
ig login -u <username>	Login with username, prompt for password
ig login -u <user> -p <pass>	Login with credentials (non-interactive)
ig logout	Logout and clear session
ig status	Check server status and auth state
ig me	Show current logged-in user info

Example:

$ ig login
Instagram Login
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Your password will be encrypted before transmission.

Username: bg_jocker
Password: [hidden]

Authenticating...
✓ Login successful!
  Logged in as: bg_jocker (BG Jocker)

Inbox

Command	Description
ig inbox	Show inbox (default: 20 conversations)
ig inbox -l 50	Show 50 conversations
ig inbox -u	Show only unread conversations
ig open <n>	Open chat by inbox number (1, 2, 3...)

Example:

$ ig inbox
Fetching inbox...

Inbox
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  1. Phyu Sin Htet @phyu_sin_htett 17d
     └ Hello Sis Testing
  2. SawLynn @s4wlynn 13d
     └ Hello Bro
  3. Aung Nanda Oo @nikki_aung 18d
     └ Hello
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Showing 3 conversations

$ ig open 1
# Opens interactive chat with the first conversation (Phyu Sin Htet)

Search Users

Command	Description
ig search <query>	Search for a user
ig search @username	Search by username

Example:

$ ig search phyu_sin_htett

User Found
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Username: @phyu_sin_htett
  Name: Phyu Sin Htet
  Account: Private
  Followers: 1.2K
  Following: 500

Send message: ig send phyu_sin_htett -m "Hello!"

Sending Messages

Command	Description
ig send <username>	Send message (interactive prompt)
ig send <username> -m "text"	Send message directly
ig reply <thread_id>	Reply to thread (interactive)
ig reply <thread_id> -m "text"	Reply directly
ig chat <username>	Interactive chat mode

Example - Single message:

$ ig send phyu_sin_htett -m "Hello!"
Sending to @phyu_sin_htett...
✓ Message sent to @phyu_sin_htett

Example - Interactive chat:

$ ig chat s4wlynn
Chat with @s4wlynn
Type your messages. Empty line to exit.

> Hey, how are you?
✓ Sent
> Let's catch up soon!
✓ Sent
>
Exiting chat mode.

Viewing Threads

Command	Description
ig thread <thread_id>	View messages in a thread
ig thread @username	View messages by username
ig thread <thread_id> -l 50	View 50 messages

Example:

$ ig thread @phyu_sin_htett
Finding conversation with @phyu_sin_htett...

Conversation with: phyu_sin_htett
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
You 17d
  Hello Sis Testing

phyu_sin_htett 17d
  Hello!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Global Options

Option	Description
-s, --server <URL>	Custom server URL (default: http://localhost:8000)
-h, --help	Show help
-V, --version	Show version

Server API Endpoints

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/health	Server status and auth state
GET	/auth/public-key	RSA public key for encryption
POST	/auth/login	Login (encrypted_password or password)
POST	/auth/logout	Logout
GET	/inbox	List conversations
GET	/thread/{id}	Get thread messages
POST	/thread/{id}/send	Send to thread
POST	/send/{username}	Send to user
GET	/user/{username}	Search user

Project Structure

insta_cli/
├── cli/                          # Rust CLI
│   ├── Cargo.toml
│   └── src/
│       ├── main.rs               # CLI entry point & commands
│       ├── client.rs             # HTTP client
│       ├── crypto.rs             # RSA encryption
│       ├── models.rs             # API data types
│       └── commands/
│           ├── mod.rs
│           ├── auth.rs           # login, logout, status
│           ├── inbox.rs          # inbox, thread
│           └── send.rs           # send, reply, chat
│
├── server/                       # Python FastAPI server
│   ├── main.py                   # API endpoints
│   ├── crypto.py                 # RSA key management
│   ├── instagram.py              # Instagram client wrapper
│   └── models/                   # Pydantic models
│
└── Update.md                     # This file

Installation

# Build CLI
cd cli
cargo build --release

# Install globally as 'ig'
cp target/release/insta-cli ~/.local/bin/ig

# Start server
cd ../server
python main.py