I Built an AI Agent
to Grow My Social Media

The Big Picture

What This Agent Actually Does

I named my agent Chloe. She has one job: help me grow on social media. Here’s what she does every single day without me touching anything:

Every night: Chloe scrapes top AI creators on Instagram and TikTok using Apify. She pulls their newest posts, views, engagement, and captions. She knows what topics are trending, what hooks are getting views, and what formats are working right now.

Every night: She also pulls the latest AI and tech news from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, TechCrunch, The Verge, Reddit, and more — so my content is always relevant to what’s happening that day.

Every night: She pulls MY Instagram and TikTok data. She uses Whisper to transcribe my videos and review my scripts and hooks. She uses GPT-4o Vision to analyze my thumbnails. And she tracks every single video over time — day-over-day views, likes, comments, shares, saves — so she knows which videos kept growing weeks later and which ones died after day one.

Every morning: I wake up to a Telegram message from Chloe with 3-5 content ideas. Each one has a hook, the best format to film it in, and a confidence score based on what’s actually performing on my account. If an idea works best as a carousel, she builds the whole thing — every slide, caption, and design direction.

Every Sunday: She sends me a full weekly report. What performed, what flopped, which hooks worked, what patterns are emerging, and exactly what to change.

Here’s every tool involved and what it does:

• OpenClaw — The agent framework. This is where your agent lives, thinks, and runs. It manages the agent’s identity, memory, skills, and scheduled tasks (crons). Think of it as the brain and the operating system.

• AWS EC2 — A cloud server (Ubuntu Linux) where OpenClaw runs 24/7. Your agent needs a computer that’s always on. An EC2 instance costs ~$5-15/month for a small one. You can also use DigitalOcean, Linode, or any VPS — anything that runs Ubuntu.

• Apify — A web scraping platform with pre-built scrapers (“actors”) for Instagram and TikTok. Your agent calls the Apify API to pull public post data — views, likes, comments, captions, timestamps. Free tier gives you enough to start.

• OpenAI Whisper — Transcribes your video audio into text. This is how Chloe reads your scripts and extracts your hooks. Costs about $0.006 per minute of audio — pennies.

• OpenAI GPT-4o Vision — Analyzes your video thumbnails. Scores them on scroll-stopping power, text overlay effectiveness, composition, and energy. About $0.01-0.03 per image.

• Telegram — How your agent talks to you. Chloe sends daily ideas, weekly reports, and on-demand responses as Telegram DMs. You can message her back anytime to brainstorm, analyze, or adjust.

• Claude (Anthropic) — The actual AI powering the thinking. OpenClaw uses Claude under the hood for all the analysis, idea generation, and conversation.

Get an AWS EC2 Instance Running

1. Go to aws.amazon.com → Create an account (or sign in).
2. Go to EC2 → Launch Instance.
3. Choose Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS (free tier eligible for t2.micro — enough to start).
4. Instance type: t2.small or t3.small recommended (~$8-15/month). t2.micro works but is tight on memory.
5. Create a key pair (download the .pem file — you’ll need this to SSH in). Store it somewhere safe.
6. Security group: Allow SSH (port 22) from your IP. Allow outbound traffic on all ports (your agent needs to reach APIs).
7. Launch the instance. Note the public IP address.

SSH into your server:

ssh -i your-key.pem ubuntu@YOUR-EC2-IP

Install OpenClaw

Once you’re SSH’d into your server, follow the OpenClaw installation instructions at openclaw.com. OpenClaw manages your agent’s identity, memory, skills, and cron jobs. After installation, you’ll have a workspace directory where your agent lives — usually at /home/ubuntu/.openclaw/agents/.

Set Up Telegram

1. Open Telegram → search for @BotFather → send /newbot.
2. Name your bot (e.g., “Chloe”) and choose a username.
3. BotFather gives you a bot token — save this. You’ll configure it in OpenClaw.
4. Message your new bot on Telegram to start a conversation. Note your chat ID (OpenClaw docs explain how to find this).
5. Configure the bot token and chat ID in OpenClaw’s settings so your agent can send you messages.

Now your agent can DM you directly on Telegram — and you can message it back anytime for on-demand analysis, ideas, or questions.

Store Your API Keys

Create a centralized credentials file on your server. You’ll need:

• APIFY_API_TOKEN — From apify.com → Settings → Integrations → API Token
• OPENAI_API_KEY — From platform.openai.com → API Keys
• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY — Configured through OpenClaw

Store these in your OpenClaw credentials directory so your scripts and agent can access them securely.

This is the engine. Three scripts that run every night to collect and analyze your data — automatically, for pennies.

Script 1: Pull Social Data (Apify)

This bash script calls the Apify API to pull your latest Instagram and TikTok post data. It uses two pre-built Apify actors:

• Instagram: apify/instagram-profile-scraper
• TikTok: clockworks/free-tiktok-scraper

The script pulls up to 30 posts per platform per run (hard limit to keep costs at zero on Apify’s free tier). It saves the raw JSON to a data/raw/ folder with the date in the filename.

Then it runs a Python script that parses the raw JSON and updates a master content tracker — a single JSON file that stores every video with daily metric snapshots. This is how your agent knows which videos are still growing vs. which ones flatlined.

Script 2: Analyze New Videos (Whisper + Vision)

For every NEW video that hasn’t been analyzed yet, this script does two things:

1. Transcribes the audio with OpenAI Whisper. It downloads the video temporarily, sends the audio to Whisper, gets back a full transcript with timestamps, and extracts the hook (first 5 seconds of speech). This is how your agent knows exactly what you said and how you opened every video. Cost: ~$0.006 per minute.

2. Analyzes the thumbnail with GPT-4o Vision. It sends the thumbnail URL to Vision and gets back a 1-10 score on five dimensions: scroll-stopping power, text overlay effectiveness, creator energy/expression, composition quality, and overall impact. It also gives specific notes on what’s working and what could be improved. Cost: ~$0.01-0.03 per image.

Transcripts are saved in data/transcripts/ and vision analyses in data/vision/, indexed by video ID. The content tracker gets updated with analyzed: true so each video is only processed once.

Script 3: The Content Tracker (Python)

This is the source of truth. A Python script that parses Instagram and TikTok data (they have different JSON formats), maintains a master JSON file with every video, and appends daily metric snapshots to each entry. The structure per video looks like this:

• Video ID, platform, URL, posted date, caption
• Hook text (extracted from Whisper transcript)
• Thumbnail analysis scores (from GPT-4o Vision)
• Transcript summary
• Array of daily snapshots: date, views, likes, comments, shares, saves

This means your agent can answer questions like: “Which of my videos are still gaining views after 7 days?” “Which hooks got the most saves?” “What thumbnails scored highest on scroll-stopping power?”

Cron jobs are scheduled tasks that run automatically at set times. OpenClaw has its own cron system — you use openclaw cron create to set them up (NOT system crontab).

Here are the three crons that power everything:

Cron 1: Daily Data Pull — 7:00 AM UTC

Type: Bash script
What it runs: Your data collection script + analysis script back-to-back
What happens: Apify pulls your latest Instagram/TikTok data. The tracker updates with new snapshots. Whisper transcribes any new videos. Vision analyzes any new thumbnails. All data is ready before your agent wakes up.
Cost: ~$0 (bash) + pennies for Whisper/Vision on new videos only

Cron 2: Daily Content Ideas — 7:30 AM UTC

Type: Agent turn (this one uses Claude)
What happens: Your agent reads the freshly pulled data, checks what’s trending in AI news, reviews your recent performance, avoids repeating ideas from the past 7 days, and generates 3-5 content ideas. Each idea includes: the concept, a hook (specific opening line), why it matters to your audience, the best format (talking head, tutorial, carousel, reaction), and a confidence score. Delivered to you via Telegram DM.
Cost: ~$0.05 per run (one Claude agent turn)

Cron 3: Weekly Deep Report — Sunday 8:00 AM UTC

Type: Agent turn
What happens: Your agent reads ALL your video data, analyzes growth curves, identifies your top performers and worst performers, finds patterns in hooks/formats/topics/posting times, and compiles a comprehensive weekly report. It also updates a content playbook — a knowledge file that compounds your learnings over time. This means your agent gets smarter every single week.
Cost: ~$0.10 per run

An OpenClaw agent is defined by a set of markdown files in its workspace. These files tell the agent who it is, what it knows, how it should behave, and what tools it has access to. Here are the key files you need to create:

• AGENTS.md — The master operating instructions. This is the most important file. It defines: the agent’s role, its cron schedule, what tools and scripts it has access to, cost controls, formatting rules, and behavioral guidelines. Think of it as the employee handbook.

• SOUL.md — The agent’s personality and communication style. How it talks to you, what tone it uses, whether it’s casual or formal. I made Chloe direct, data-driven, and a little bit sassy.

• USER.md — Everything about YOU. Your niche, your audience, your content pillars, your brand voice, your goals. This is how the agent knows to filter everything through your specific lens.

• MEMORY.md — Long-term learnings that compound over time. Your content pillars, proven hook patterns, audience insights, monetization context. The agent updates this as it learns.

• TOOLS.md — Technical configuration: API keys, server environment, file paths. The agent references this to know where its data lives and what APIs it can call.

Below is a starter template for the most critical file — your agent’s operating instructions. Copy and customize this for your own niche and accounts.

You wake up. You open Telegram. Your agent has already:

• Scraped the top creators in your niche overnight
• Pulled the latest news and trends
• Analyzed your last 30 videos with daily snapshots
• Transcribed and scored your newest content
• Cross-referenced what’s trending with what performs on YOUR account
• Filtered out ideas it already sent you this week
• Generated 3-5 fresh content ideas with hooks, formats, and confidence scores

You pick one. You film it. You post it. Your agent tracks it from day one, captures the growth curve, and folds the results into next week’s strategy.

This is what it actually looks like to use AI to run your content. Not asking ChatGPT to write a caption. An actual system that watches, learns, and gets better every single week.

And when you want to chat with your agent — brainstorm a script, check on a video’s performance, get feedback on a hook — you just message it on Telegram. It has all your data. It responds in seconds.

This agent runs my social media strategy. But AI agents can run almost any part of your work — client research, email drafts, weekly reports, meeting prep. The Weekend Bootcamp teaches you how to build a complete system of skills, automations, and workflows specifically for your job title.