Instagram Carousel Slide Generator

You have the idea. You have the post. You just don't have eight slides, a caption, and matching visuals — and it's already Tuesday.

Instagram Carousel Slide Generator turns a blog URL, markdown file, or a bare topic into a complete Instagram carousel: branded 1080×1080 PNG slides with AI-generated backgrounds and typography overlays, plus a ready-to-post caption with hooks and hashtags. The whole pipeline runs from one command.

Built on the same visual system as the existing instagram-slides workspace skill, with three new additions: a topic-only mode so you don't need a source article, a --no-images flag for layout previews without spending Fal credits, and four theme presets so the visual style matches your brand.

What's Included

• Full slide generation pipeline: LLM planning → Fal background generation → Pillow text compositing → numbered PNG outputs
• --topic mode: generate a full carousel from a freeform topic string with no source article needed
• --no-images mode: renders complete slide layouts using placeholder backgrounds — useful for previewing copy and structure before committing to image generation
• Four theme presets: light, dark, warm, bold
• caption.txt with a complete Instagram caption, hook, and hashtags
• plan.json saved separately so you can regenerate with different themes without replanning
• Bundled brand fonts (Fraunces + Inter family) included in the package

Why This is Better

• Most carousel tools require a source URL. This works from a topic alone — useful for content that doesn't start from a blog post.
• --no-images gives you a full structural preview for free, so you can check copy length, slide order, and layout before spending on image generation.
• The plan/render split lets you separate content planning from visual production. Plan first, render when ready.
• Background images are generated without baked-in text, then composited with typography separately — which means you can regenerate images or change themes without rewriting copy.
• Bundled fonts mean the visual output is consistent across machines without setup.

Core Capabilities

• Generate carousel slides from URL, local file, or topic string
• Plan-only mode for content strategy and copy review before rendering
• Placeholder slide mode for layout preview without API calls
• Theme presets: light, dark, warm, bold
• Saves raw backgrounds so you can re-composite without regenerating
• Produces caption with hook, value summary, CTA, and hashtags

Requirements

• Python 3 with Pillow and requests: pip3 install Pillow requests
• OpenRouter API key for the planning step (set OPENROUTER_API_KEY)
• Fal API key at ~/.config/fal/api_key for image generation (not needed with --no-images)