Fall through to the post page when a reel embeds only its cover frame #21

2026-09-16T23:54:51Z

Kydoimos commented

2026-09-16 23:54:51 +00:00

What

Instagram reels were resolving to a still image instead of a video.

Why

The captioned embed stopped shipping a reel's video_url, and its logged-out player never draws a <video> element — so both the payload path (shortcode_media had is_video: true but no video_url) and the DOM path returned only the cover frame. Because that poster still counted as media, scraped.media.length was truthy and the existing post-page fallback never fired.

Fix

Trigger the post-page fallback when the URL is a reel (or the payload declared a video) but no video was resolved. The post page's payload still carries the progressive MP4 in video_versions (the shared meta-media schema). The embed's caption, handle and avatar are carried forward, since the post-page payload does not include the owner.

Verification

npm run resolve now returns a video with the cover frame as poster, correct handle, avatar, caption and dimensions.
New fixture test/fixtures/instagram/reel-video-versions.json (real post-page payload) plus a test in test/instagram.test.ts asserting a reel resolves to a progressive video with its cover frame as poster.
npm run typecheck and npm test (159 pass) both green.

## What Instagram reels were resolving to a still image instead of a video. ## Why The captioned embed stopped shipping a reel's `video_url`, and its logged-out player never draws a `<video>` element — so both the payload path (`shortcode_media` had `is_video: true` but no `video_url`) and the DOM path returned only the cover frame. Because that poster still counted as media, `scraped.media.length` was truthy and the existing post-page fallback never fired. ## Fix Trigger the post-page fallback when the URL is a reel (or the payload declared a video) but no video was resolved. The post page's payload still carries the progressive MP4 in `video_versions` (the shared meta-media schema). The embed's caption, handle and avatar are carried forward, since the post-page payload does not include the owner. ## Verification - `npm run resolve` now returns a `video` with the cover frame as poster, correct handle, avatar, caption and dimensions. - New fixture `test/fixtures/instagram/reel-video-versions.json` (real post-page payload) plus a test in `test/instagram.test.ts` asserting a reel resolves to a progressive video with its cover frame as poster. - `npm run typecheck` and `npm test` (159 pass) both green.

Kydoimos added 1 commit 2026-09-16 23:57:41 +00:00

Fall through to the post page when a reel embeds only its cover frame

CI / Typecheck, test, build (pull_request) Successful in 29s

Details

cc4f094fb8

The captioned embed stopped shipping a reel's video_url and never draws a
logged-out <video>, so both the payload and the DOM hand back the cover
frame alone. Because that still counts as media, the post-page fallback
never fired and a reel resolved to a still image.

Trigger the fallback when the URL is a reel (or the payload declared a
video) but no video was found, so it reaches the post page, whose payload
still carries the progressive file in video_versions. The embed's
caption, handle and avatar are carried forward, since the post-page
payload does not include the owner.

Co-authored-by: anthropic/claude-opus-4-8

Kydoimos force-pushed fix/instagram-reel-video from f968ac749c to cc4f094fb8

2026-09-16 23:57:41 +00:00

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thatguygriff approved these changes

2026-09-17 00:00:08 +00:00

thatguygriff merged commit 1f1f777374 into main

2026-09-17 00:00:12 +00:00

thatguygriff deleted branch fix/instagram-reel-video

2026-09-17 00:00:13 +00:00

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Reference: Unsupervised/antisocial#21