An Instagram Automation Tool That Turns Engagement into Sales

#devchallenge #muxchallenge #showandtell #video

DEV's Worldwide Show and Tell Challenge Submission 🎥

This is a submission for the DEV's Worldwide Show and Tell Challenge Presented by Mux

What I Built

I built Pilot, an Instagram automation and deal management platform for creators, founders, and small teams who sell through Instagram.

Pilot turns comments and DMs into a structured sales workflow. Instead of manually replying, losing leads, or tracking deals in screenshots, everything runs through one system: automated replies, lead capture, contact management, and deal tracking, all connected to your Instagram account.

It's built for people who already have demand and want clarity, not hacks.

My Pitch Video

Demo

Live app: https://pilot-ops.vercel.app
App Repository: https://github.com/pilot-ops-crm/app
Website Repository: https://github.com/pilot-ops-crm/website

To test:

Sign up
Connect an Instagram business account
Create a simple automation like "comment YES → send DM"
Watch leads show up in the dashboard as contacts and deals

Another way to test it is to try putting a comment on this reel. Pilot will automatically reach out to you with the ebook described in the reel.

The Story Behind It

Instagram has quietly become a real sales channel. Creators close brand deals there. Small businesses sell products there. Coaches and founders run their entire pipeline through DMs.

But the tooling hasn't caught up.

Most people still manage everything manually. Replies are copy-pasted. Leads get buried. There's no visibility into who's serious and who's not.

Pilot exists to bring structure to that chaos.

Not to replace how people sell on Instagram, but to support it with systems that scale.

Once someone experiences Instagram with a real pipeline behind it, they don't go back.

Technical Highlights

Built with Next.js (App Router) and TypeScript
PostgreSQL + Drizzle ORM for structured data and deal tracking
Instagram API for account connection, comments, and DMs
Event-driven workflows using Inngest
AI-powered assistant built with Vercel AI SDK + Google AI
Fully typed forms, tables, and dashboards using shadcn/ui and TanStack Table
Deployed on Vercel, production-ready with Sentry monitoring

A key focus was personalisation.

The AI assistant works off the user's actual business data, contacts, and deal history, not generic prompts or canned replies.

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