Instagram is the app I spend the most time on. It’s my doomscrolling app during breaks and the one I use before falling asleep. So, naturally, over the last eight years, my Instagram saved posts have accumulated hundreds of movies, TV shows, and anime titles that I wish to watch “someday.” When I realized my save count was nearing 1,000, I decided it was time to start reducing my backlog; otherwise, I’ll never get around to watching the titles I religiously saved over eight years. The problem was twofold: the 906-post-long save dump was frighteningly long to go through manually, and it also had books, manga, Wallpaper Engine wallpapers, and indie game recommendations mixed in. Separating the movies, shows, and anime from the rest of it in a sensible format meant that I needed help. So, I fed everything into Claude and asked it to create a clean, sortable watchlist that I could actually use. Seeing the results, I realized I should have done this years ago.
I used Claude to reduce my game backlog, and it figured out the pattern I’d been missing for years
I’m finally confident I can start reducing my backlog instead of growing it
Claude couldn’t scrape my Instagram saves, so I had to do some legwork
Manual Instagram export only took a few minutes
It would have been amazing if I could connect Claude directly to my Instagram account in a single click. However, since my Instagram saves are private, Claude couldn’t scrape them out of the box. While I could have written a Python script or used a third-party platform via API connectors to do it, I decided my use case didn’t need any of that. Thankfully, Meta provides a data export option within Instagram settings that allows you to download almost all of your information. I selected “Saved” to get just my saved posts in an HTML file. The compressed download file also had separate “saved collections” and “saved music” files, which can be very useful for some people. I only needed the “saved posts” HTML, which I converted into a CSV file using an online converter, so I could provide Claude with a more readable dump. After that, it was time for the prompt.
I connected Claude with these 5 apps, and it’s productivity on steroids
Smarter workflows, fewer clicks, faster output
I asked Claude to turn my chaotic save dump into a proper watchlist
It took a few tries, but finally got there
The prompt didn’t have to be complicated — I just needed Claude to make sense of the 906 Instagram saves in a way that I couldn’t, even if I tried. The functionality I was looking for was parsing through hundreds of posts in a few minutes and condensing them into a clean and stylish watchlist, sortable by genre, year, type, and watch time. So, that’s what I asked Claude to do when I shared the CSV file I had created earlier. The first pass only returned 85 titles, which was obviously way off the mark. So, I asked Claude to do a rescan, after which it returned around 200 titles, which was better, but still clearly wrong. Even after deduplication, my Instagram saves had to have several hundred more titles. Several passes later, Claude managed to go from 200 to 320, and finally to 491, after which further scans didn’t add anything to the number.
The other problem I faced was getting Claude to render the entire list in a table in a single pass. It kept hitting JavaScript’s rendering limits, truncating the list at around 120 titles. After a few tries, it decided to use window.storage, Claude’s storage API that enables persistent storage for widgets and web apps. This should have fixed the rendering limits, but Claude still kept hitting a wall after rendering about 120 titles. So, it finally decided to create an HTML file that would display all 491 titles without any dependencies, work completely offline, and allow all the filter and sort options I needed.
My favorite Claude prompt is ‘write me a better prompt’ — and it saves hours every week
The simple workflow saves me hours weekly
My Instagram save dump is now a persistent watchlist I can access anywhere
It’s now my single source of truth
My 8-year-long Instagram save dump was now an easy-to-use, portable, HTML watchlist with movies, shows, and anime sortable by genre, year, and watch time. Claude had automatically added another column, “Where to Watch”, which was a link to a Google search for the title, helping me out with the relevant streaming apps. I downloaded the watchlist on my phone and shared it with my partner, so we now had a ready-to-use recommendations app whenever we ran out of stuff to watch. I’ve been using this offline web app to get through my backlog in an organized manner. I no longer need to waste time finalizing what to watch. My personally curated Instagram saves are now viewable in a simple yet useful watchlist, so I don’t even need to manually look through my saved posts anymore.
Having this watchlist has allowed me to watch the titles I’ve always wanted to instead of just firing up a newly released title on Netflix, Prime Video, or Apple TV+. My backlog has gone from an ever-growing list to something that I now have a real chance of getting through. I’ll also add a feature to mark a title as “watched” when I’m done with it, and another one to show a direct link to a streaming app (if available) instead of a simple Google search link. There are many ways to make an even better watchlist/backlog curator with Claude, but my existing watchlist works for now. You can achieve more advanced results by asking Claude to recommend, say, three titles based on your mood or available time. You could also add to the backlog whenever you come across a new title. You could even ask Claude to recommend titles that aren’t in your backlog at all, based on the ones that you’ve already shared with it.
Claude and ChatGPT are helping me plan my wedding, but only one gets the job done
I think I just saved thousands on a wedding planner
My 8-year-long effort is finally paying dividends
For eight long years, I have logged almost every single movie, show, and anime title I’ve wanted to watch in my Instagram saves. Over time, this save dump became too large to be useful, since I would never be able to manually go through it all. Claude helped me turn this raw watchlist into an organized one that I could interact with. I can apply filters and sort the titles based on several criteria, getting more out of my personally curated watchlist than ever before.
