An Instagram Direct chat bot built on @lazyneoaz/ig-chat-api, an unofficial Instagram Direct API client whose public surface mirrors fb-chat-api and runs against a hosted ig-chat-api server.

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The Messenger original, Goat-Bot-V2, is by NTKhang. This Instagram edition is by lazyneoaz — Saifullah Al Neoaz (@lazyneoaz), forked from NTKhang's GoatBot repo and adapted to run on a personal Instagram account instead of Facebook Messenger. The bot logic (command handler, event handler, database, dashboard) is unchanged; only the engine was swapped from Facebook to Instagram and every fb-chat-api call was repointed at the Instagram client.

📸 Screenshots

Uptime & system dashboard — live process stats, host resources, Node version	Music search — find a track and send it as a sticker
Group events — welcome / leave logs and admin actions	Prefix info — per-thread command prefix, replies in place

📝 Note

• This bot uses a personal Instagram account and the unofficial Instagram Direct API client. Automated use can get the account flagged or locked, so use a throwaway/clone account.
• I am not responsible for any problem that may arise from using this bot.

🚧 Requirements

• Node.js >= 18. The realtime DGW web socket uses the built-in global WebSocket on Node >= 22, and falls back to the ws package on older runtimes; if neither is available it falls back to the Android /lightspeed stream, so realtime still works.
• An Instagram account whose session cookies you can export (browser Cookie-Editor, or an existing appState JSON).

📦 Install

git clone https://github.com/lazyneoaz/Insta-Bot.git goatbot-ig
cd goatbot-ig
npm install

The Instagram client is a normal npm dependency ("@lazyneoaz/ig-chat-api": "^0.0.1"); npm install fetches it, so no extra step is needed.

🔑 Session

The bot reads the login session from account.txt in the project root (gitignored). Any of these formats works:

• a fb-chat-api / GoatBot appState array — [{ "key": "sessionid", "value": "..." }, ...]
• a raw browser Cookie-Editor export — [{ "name": "sessionid", "value": "..." }, ...]
• a Netscape cookies.txt file
• a plain cookie header string — sessionid=...; ds_user_id=...; csrftoken=...

The array must contain at least sessionid and ds_user_id. csrftoken is recommended.

▶️ Run

node index.js

index.js supervises Goat.js and restarts it on exit code 2 (the code the bot uses for "restart"). On success you should see:

LOGIN INSTAGRAM: Successful login
BOT_STARTED: Bot has been started successfully, start receiving messages from users

Then send the prefix (default -) followed by a command in an Instagram DM.

Hosting note: on managed hosts (Render, Railway, Heroku) the dashboard and the uptime server bind the port assigned in $PORT, falling back to config.json when it is unset — so the service passes the host health check and is not restarted.

💡 How it works

• bot/login/login.js reads account.txt, calls the client's login({ appState }, optionsFca, cb) and starts api.listenMqtt(callback).
• The client connects to the hosted ig-chat-api server, which holds the Instagram session and normalises Instagram Direct messages into the same event shape fb-chat-api emits (type, senderID, threadID, messageID, body, attachments, mentions, timestamp, ...), so handlerEvents and every script work unchanged.
• handlerEvents routes the event to commands/events (onStart, onChat, onFirstChat, onReply, onReaction, onEvent, handlerEvent). These work exactly as documented upstream.

⚙️ Configuration

config.json holds the bot settings. The Instagram-specific parts:

• instagramAccount.userAgent / instagramAccount.proxy — legacy Instagram HTTP settings; the hosted client ignores them (the server owns the request fingerprint and proxy), kept only for backwards compatibility.

• optionsFca — the options passed to the client's login() (listenEvents, updatePresence, listenTyping, selfListen, selfListenEvent, autoMarkDelivery, autoReconnect, forceLogin, logLevel, plus the keep-alive / token-refresh knobs keepAliveInterval, tokenRefreshInterval, realtimeKeepAlive). Engine-internal keys (proxy, dgwHost, userAgent, ...) are server-owned and ignored by the hosted client. See the client docs for the full list.

• autoRefreshSession — when true, the refreshed cookies returned by the client are written back to account.txt so the session does not go stale.

• gbanCheck — disabled by default. The upstream GBAN list is keyed by Facebook numeric uids; an Instagram id can collide with one of them, and the check exits the bot hard when GitHub is unreachable. Enable it only if you know what you are doing.

• customFeatures — two admin-only quality-of-life switches (both off by default):

  • unsendOnReaction — when a bot admin reacts to a message the bot sent with one of the configured emojis (default 😠 / 😡), the bot unsends that message. Works on any message the bot sent (command replies, random sends, game prompts). Configure the trigger emojis in customFeatures.unsendOnReaction.reactions, or toggle it with -unsendonreaction [on | off | status].
  • noPrefix — lets a bot admin run a command by sending its exact name or alias with no prefix (e.g. help instead of -help). Normal chat is never treated as a command: a message only runs when its first word exactly matches a command name or alias, so hello how are you is ignored. Toggle it with -noprefix [on | off | status]. Non-admins always need the prefix.

Google credentials (config.json → credentials.gmailAccount, credentials.gRecaptcha) are optional: Gmail notifications / dashboard OTP and Google Drive upload are disabled when they are empty or absent, and the bot still starts and serves chat commands.

The .dev variants (config.dev.json, configCommands.dev.json, account.dev.txt, *.dev.js) are optional too. When NODE_ENV is production or development the .dev file is used if it exists, otherwise the bot falls back to the regular file instead of refusing to start.

Everything else (database, dashboard, languages, configCommands.json) is unchanged from Goat-Bot-V2.

🛠️ Creating commands

Same as upstream — see DOCS.md and the commented examples in scripts/cmds/newcommand.eg.js / scripts/events/newcommandevent.eg.js. Any fb-chat-api method you know (api.sendMessage, api.changeNickname, api.sendAttachment, ...) is available through the client, and the client docs list exactly which ones exist and which Instagram lacks.

📚 The client

@lazyneoaz/ig-chat-api is installed from npm (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@lazyneoaz/ig-chat-api). It is a thin client for the hosted ig-chat-api server: it supports both callback and promise style for every method, exposes the realtime (listenMqtt) event stream, and needs no local Instagram protocol code. Install it with the project (npm install) or on its own (npm install @lazyneoaz/ig-chat-api).

✨ Credits

• NTKhang (https://github.com/ntkhang03) — the original Goat-Bot-V2, the Messenger bot this project is forked from.
• lazyneoaz — Saifullah Al Neoaz (https://github.com/lazyneoaz) — the Instagram edition (GoatBot IG) and the @lazyneoaz/ig-chat-api client.

📜 License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Made with ❤️ by lazyneoaz — Saifullah Al Neoaz

⭐ If this project helps you, consider giving it a star!