Choosing a trigger

The trigger decides what kind of event your automation answers. There are five, and your choice changes the rest of the builder.

Trigger	Fires when	Can reply with
On comment	Someone comments on your post or reel	A public reply, a DM, or both
On live comment	Someone comments while you are broadcasting	A public reply, a DM, or both
On DM	Someone sends you a direct message	A DM
On story reply	Someone replies to your story	A DM
On story mention	Someone mentions you in their story	A DM

The two comment triggers have two channels

A comment can be answered in two places at once: publicly under the comment, where everyone sees it, and privately as a DM to the person who wrote it. You can use either or both. This is true of both on comment and on live comment.

The DM sent in answer to a comment is special: Instagram allows exactly one per comment, within seven days. That is Instagram's rule, and it applies whether the DM is sent by an automation or by you.

Feed comments and live comments are separate

An on comment automation does not answer live comments, and an on live comment automation does not answer comments on your posts. They are different surfaces with different rules, so each gets its own automation. See live comment automations for what changes.

The three DM triggers

On DM, on story reply and on story mention all arrive in the same place and all reply the same way, with a single DM. They are separate triggers so you can answer a story reply differently from an ordinary message.

Story mentions have no text

When someone mentions you in their story there is nothing written to match against, so the Conditions step does not appear. A story mention automation answers every mention.

Choosing between them

If you want to catch people asking about a product under a post, use on comment. If you want to greet anyone who messages you, use on DM. If you run stories with a call to action, on story reply is the one that answers them.