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Instagram Close Friends Butler — auto-add new followers to your Close Friends list

Automate adding new Instagram followers to your Close Friends list with strict per-hour and per-day rate limits, run-day restrictions, and a do-not-add list.

What Close Friends Butler does

Instagram's Close Friends feature lets you publish Stories visible only to a curated list. For creators, that list is where exclusive offers, behind-the-scenes content, and high-conversion content lives. The problem: adding new followers to Close Friends manually is tedious — Instagram makes you scroll-and-tap one at a time.

Close Friends Butler automates the "add new followers to Close Friends" step. It walks your follower list, adds anyone not already on Close Friends (skipping your do-not-add list), and respects strict rate caps so Instagram doesn't flag the account.

Before you start

  • A signed-in Instagram session in Chrome.
  • A clear answer to: who do you want on Close Friends? The default is "everyone who follows you," but you might want to restrict to people who've engaged in some way. Butler doesn't gate this — you do, via the do-not-add list.

Why the rate caps matter

Instagram heavily rate-limits the "add to close friends" action. Three separate caps apply, and Butler stops at the lowest active one:

  • perHour — default 20. Don't raise above 30 even on established accounts.
  • perDay — default 200. Don't raise above 300.
  • total — default 1000. The lifetime cap for the run config; useful as a brake on long-running schedules.

These caps are conservative on purpose. If you breach Instagram's invisible threshold, your account gets action-blocked from Close Friends for 24-72 hours.

Running your first pass

  1. Open Instagram Close Friends Butler under Instagram Butler (parent toggle).
  2. In Run settings:
  • Per run — 25 (default). Stop the run after this many adds, even if other caps allow more.
  • Per hour — 20 (default). Hard ceiling per rolling hour.
  • Min/Max delay — 7-15 seconds between adds. Random jitter within this range, looks more human than a fixed delay.
  1. (Optional) In Restrict by day, set which weekdays the run is allowed to fire. Useful for a "weekday mornings only" cadence.
  2. Click Run.

A Chrome window opens. Butler walks your follower list, opens each profile (or uses the bulk-list UI when available), and adds non-Close-Friends accounts. The Adds/hr badge in the topbar shows real-time pacing.

The do-not-add list

Some followers shouldn't be on Close Friends — competitors, brands you don't want privy to behind-the-scenes content, people who only follow to spam. The do-not-add list (a textarea of usernames, one per line) skips them on every run.

There's also a history table at the bottom listing every account Butler has added to Close Friends with a timestamp. Export CSV dumps it for backup; Restore deleted recovers anything removed by mistake; Delete all wipes the local history (does NOT remove them from Close Friends on Instagram).

Tuning over time

  • autoHarvestFollowers stays on by default — Butler re-walks your follower list each run rather than relying on a cached list. Adds a few seconds but keeps the list current.
  • Per-run cap — raise to 50 once you've watched a week of clean runs at 25. Don't go above 75 even on established accounts.
  • Delay range — 7-15s is safe. 5-10s is the floor; below 5s, Instagram throttles aggressively.
  • Restrict by day — useful for accounts where the algorithm rewards consistent activity windows.

Where the data goes

Close Friends history (handle + timestamp) lives in the preseed cache. CSV export is one-click from the history toolbar.

Common gotchas

  • "Action blocked" banner — you exceeded Instagram's invisible cap. Butler stops automatically. Wait 24-72 hours before resuming, and lower the per-hour cap a notch.
  • Butler skips an account that's eligible — they might already be on Close Friends. Butler checks the membership flag before adding.
  • History shows adds but Instagram says they're not on Close Friends — Instagram's UI sometimes lags behind the actual list state. Refresh your Close Friends page on Instagram directly to confirm.

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