From 21397240509aa4746cbd898299c80f336c19d5c8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "prompt.ac/@jeffrey" <mail@aesthetic.computer>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2026 17:44:35 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] instagram: do not believe a refusal the account contradicts

@menuband.app was never blocked from publishing. It was publishing fine and
being told it had failed.

`media_publish` can post the reel and still answer 400. That is what happened
33 times: each hourly run reported "Cannot Create Media / Create media fail,
please try to re-create media", each one put another copy of 95-saucer on the
grid, and none of them reached the ledger. The account ended up carrying 33
more posts than its own record knew about -- the 79-vs-46 gap that turned up
during the grid reset and got written off as a stale ledger. Read as a wall
of identical failures, it looked like an account-level ban. It was a
publishing loop with the success signal inverted.

So a refusal is now checked against the account before it is believed: sample
media_count either side of the call, and if it moved, the reel went up. Report
success, recover the id from /media?limit=1, and let the receipt and ledger
happen normally. If the count moved but the id cannot be read back, say so
loudly and refuse to pretend either way -- an unledgered live post is exactly
what makes the lane repost it.

Proven on the account itself: 94-gramophone published first try through this
same path minutes after 95-saucer's "failure" had silently published too,
leaving two posts on a grid whose ledger recorded one.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01X62vT9M1iQXjNTF1jMcpN5
---
 toolchain/instagram/ig.mjs | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
 1 file changed, 28 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/toolchain/instagram/ig.mjs b/toolchain/instagram/ig.mjs
index 348b4b3584..783f205877 100644
--- a/toolchain/instagram/ig.mjs
+++ b/toolchain/instagram/ig.mjs
@@ -339,10 +339,34 @@ async function doPost(creds) {
   }
   if (state !== "FINISHED") die(`container ended ${state} — nothing was published`);
 
-  const published = await call(api(`${creds.igUserId}/media_publish?access_token=${creds.token}`), {
-    method: "POST", headers: { "content-type": "application/json" },
-    body: JSON.stringify({ creation_id: created.id }),
-  });
+  // `media_publish` can post the reel AND still answer 400. @menuband.app did
+  // exactly that 33 times: every hourly run reported "Cannot Create Media",
+  // every hourly run put another copy of the same waltz on the grid, and none
+  // of them reached the ledger — which is why the account carried 33 more
+  // posts than its record knew about, and why this looked like a publishing
+  // ban instead of a publishing loop. So a refusal is not believed until the
+  // account agrees: if the media count moved, the reel went up, and the honest
+  // report is success with the id Meta declined to hand back.
+  const before = (await fetchMe(creds)).media_count;
+  let published;
+  try {
+    published = await call(api(`${creds.igUserId}/media_publish?access_token=${creds.token}`), {
+      method: "POST", headers: { "content-type": "application/json" },
+      body: JSON.stringify({ creation_id: created.id }),
+    });
+  } catch (error) {
+    const after = (await fetchMe(creds).catch(() => ({}))).media_count;
+    if (!(Number.isFinite(before) && Number.isFinite(after) && after > before)) throw error;
+    const recent = await call(api(`${creds.igUserId}/media?fields=id&limit=1` +
+      `&access_token=${creds.token}`)).catch(() => null);
+    const id = recent?.data?.[0]?.id;
+    console.log(`⚠ media_publish answered "${error.message}" but the account ` +
+      `went ${before} → ${after} media — the reel published anyway.`);
+    if (!id) throw new Error(
+      `published despite the error, but its media id could not be read back — ` +
+      `ledger it by hand before the lane reposts it`);
+    published = { id };
+  }
   console.log(`✓ published · ${published.id}`);
 
   // The permalink is the one field only Meta can supply, and only after the
-- 
2.51.2