Scrape primitives

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When to use it

• Creator research — pull a profile + recent posts, then pipe each into watchMedia for hook + format analysis
• Ad research — sweep Meta / Google / LinkedIn / Reddit ad libraries for a competitor or keyword and score the creative
• Content repurposing — fetch a long-form YouTube video and run it through transcribe + watch to find clip-worthy moments
• Social listening — keyword-search across TikTok / IG / X, classify sentiment, rank by reach
• Influencer scouting — filter profiles by engagement rate, then watch their last 5 posts for fit

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What you get

• API Reference → Scrape
• SDK → scrape
• CLI → scrape

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download_media — the one flag that matters

• Off (default) — Response contains raw source CDN URLs. Cheapest, but those URLs (e.g. tiktokcdn-us.com, cdninstagram.com) are typically gatekept — you usually can’t fetch them from another tool without auth.
• On — VidJutsu fetches every media URL in the response, stages it to our CDN, and replaces source URLs with VidJutsu URLs in the response. Now you can pipe directly into watchMedia, transcribeMedia, or any external LLM video tool.

# Stage all media so the result is downstream-ready
vidjutsu scrape instagram-user-posts --handle natgeo --download-media

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Cost

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Recipe — research a creator end-to-end

import { createClient } from "vidjutsu";
const vj = createClient();

// 1) Recent posts (staged so we can watch them)
const { data: posts } = await vj.scrapeInstagramUserPosts({
  handle: "natgeo",
  download_media: true,
});

// 2) Score the top post
const top = posts.items[0];
const { data: review } = await vj.watchMedia({
  mediaUrl: top.media_url,
  prompt: "Rate the hook 1-10 and explain in one sentence.",
});

console.log(review.response);

# 1) Fetch posts (staged)
POSTS=$(vidjutsu scrape instagram-user-posts \
  --handle natgeo --download-media)

# 2) Top post URL
URL=$(echo "$POSTS" | jq -r '.items[0].media_url')

# 3) Watch it
vidjutsu watch \
  --media-url "$URL" \
  --prompt "Rate the hook 1-10 and explain in one sentence."

# 1) Fetch posts
curl -X POST https://api.vidjutsu.ai/v1/scrape/instagram/user/posts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VIDJUTSU_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"handle":"natgeo","download_media":true}' \
  > posts.json

# 2) Watch top
URL=$(jq -r '.items[0].media_url' posts.json)
curl -X POST https://api.vidjutsu.ai/v1/watch \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VIDJUTSU_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"mediaUrl\":\"$URL\",\"prompt\":\"Rate the hook 1-10.\"}"

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Recipe — competitive ad teardown

const { data: ads } = await vj.scrapeMetaAds({
  query: "AG1",
  country: "US",
  download_media: true,
});

for (const ad of ads.items.slice(0, 5)) {
  const { data } = await vj.watchMedia({
    mediaUrl: ad.media_url,
    prompt: "What's the offer, the hook, and the CTA?",
  });
  console.log(ad.advertiser, data.response);
}

vidjutsu scrape meta-ads \
  --query "AG1" \
  --country US \
  --download-media \
| jq -r '.items[:5][] | "\(.advertiser)\t\(.media_url)"' \
| while IFS=$'\t' read -r brand url; do
    echo "=== $brand ==="
    vidjutsu watch --media-url "$url" \
      --prompt "What's the offer, the hook, and the CTA?"
  done

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Limits and caveats

• No private-content access. Scrape only resolves public posts, profiles, and ad-library entries. Anything behind a follower lock, age gate, or login wall is out of scope.
• Best-effort upstream. Platforms occasionally throttle or restructure their public surfaces; expect occasional upstream_unavailable errors and retry with a small delay.
• Not legal advice. You’re responsible for how you use scraped public data — respect the source platform’s ToS for downstream uses, and never republish private personal data.
• No background polling. Don’t tight-loop the same endpoint; if you need fresh data, hit it at a sane interval (5+ minutes for the same key/handle).