Your AI Agent handles Instagram DMs for you. It reads incoming messages, works out what the person wants, and replies in your voice, with your goals, your knowledge, and your rules. This guide walks you through setting it up for the first time with the 6-step wizard.
AI agent onboarding video
Before you begin
Your Instagram account needs to be connected first, or the agent has nothing to reply to. If you haven't done that yet, see How to Connect Your Instagram Account to Inrō.
The AI Agent is included at no extra cost on the Pro plan. On the free plan, you get free AI credits to try it out (50 to start, and up to 100 once you finish the onboarding checklist). When those credits run out, the agent pauses itself until you upgrade, so keep an eye on them while testing. See AI Credits: What They Are and How to Check Them.
Open the setup wizard
Click AI Agent in the left sidebar. If you haven't set up your agent yet, you'll land on a welcome page. Click Set up your AI Agent to open the 6-step wizard.
The wizard shows a live test chat on the right the whole way through. Type a message there at any step to see how your agent responds as you build it.
Step 1: Voice and personality
This step shapes how your agent speaks. Inrō reads your account and recent messages to suggest a starting personality, which you can adjust.
Role: pick the one that matches how you want the agent to interact:
Community Manager: engages followers and builds loyalty.
Sales Closer: turns chats into sales.
Support Agent: answers questions and solves issues.
Content Promoter: shares posts and boosts reach.
Lead Nurturer: follows up and warms prospects.
Brand Concierge: gives personalised guidance.
Typical message length: choose Short (around 10 words), Normal (around 25 words), or Long (around 50 words), depending on how your brand usually writes.
Style rules: a free-text field where you describe your agent's personality in plain language, like instructions for a new team member. Tone, how to open a message, topics to avoid.
Message examples: paste in a few real messages you've sent. These show the agent how you actually write, which matches your style better than any description.
Auto-like positive messages: turn this on if you want the agent to react with a heart to friendly incoming messages.
For more on shaping the voice, see Configuring Your AI Agent's Personality and Tone. Click Continue when you're done.
Step 2: Goals and instructions
Here you tell the agent what it's working toward and who it's talking to.
Account type: the category that fits your business (creator, e-commerce, local business, agency, coach, artist, or other).
Account description: what your account does and the value you offer. The agent uses this to talk about you.
Goals: what you most want the agent to achieve, like "book discovery calls" or "turn followers into customers."
Audience type: who you're talking to. Being specific helps the agent tailor its replies.
Other instructions: any extra rules, like "never discuss competitor pricing."
Click Continue.
Step 3: Training and knowledge
This is where you give the agent information to answer from. When someone asks about your pricing, returns, or how a product works, the agent searches this knowledge to find the answer.
Click Import new item and choose:
Manual text: paste in content directly, like an FAQ or product description.
Text document: upload a file (.txt, .pdf, .doc, or .docx).
Website: enter a URL and Inrō imports that page's content.
You can skip this and add knowledge later. For the full picture, see Knowledge Base: Teaching Your AI Agent What to Know. Click Continue.
Step 4: Actions and automations
This sets up things the agent can do mid-conversation when it spots a specific intent. Click Add an action and choose:
Send a link: the agent shares a specific link when a contact asks something relevant.
Add to a folder: the agent moves the contact into a folder based on what they say.
Start an automation: the agent triggers a scenario you've built.
Send a survey: the agent sends one of your surveys to collect answers.
For each action, describe the intent under "When contact wants to…", then set what happens. You can skip this and add actions later. Click Continue.
Step 5: Activation rules
This is where you decide when the agent replies. The wizard offers the two most common choices:
All pending messages: the agent replies to every message a scenario hasn't already handled.
Specific intents only: the agent replies only when a message matches an intent you define. Leave the intents empty and it won't reply at all, which is handy for testing.
There are two more modes (Automation only and Disable all replies) plus folder rules available from the dashboard. For all four and how to combine them, see Activation Rules: Controlling When Your AI Agent Replies. Click Continue.
Step 6: Setup complete
You'll see a summary of your configuration. Review it, click Confirm, and your agent is live.
Your AI Agent dashboard
After setup, clicking AI Agent opens your configuration screen, grouped into Behaviour and personality, Capabilities and actions, and Knowledge. From here you can edit any part of the setup, add intent-based actions, set up handover to a human, and choose whether the agent answers only from your knowledge or also from its general knowledge.
At the top right, the Chat with Agent button lets you test replies anytime without waiting for a real follower.
🐾 Netsuke's Tips
The Message examples field pulls more weight than the style rules alone. Paste in 3 to 5 real messages from different situations (a complaint, a sales follow-up, a warm welcome) and the agent picks up how you actually write.
Use Chat with Agent right after setup. Ask something a confused follower might ask, and check the answer is accurate and on-brand before you go live.
Picking Specific intents only doesn't limit what the agent knows, only what makes it respond. Once a matching message gets it talking, it can answer anything within its knowledge.
The agent won't reply if a scenario already answered that message. If both are running and the agent seems quiet, that priority is usually why.
What's next?
Go deeper on the parts that matter most: Configuring Your AI Agent's Personality and Tone for voice, or Activation Rules: Controlling When Your AI Agent Replies to fine-tune exactly when it speaks.