How Relationships keeps contact context

Every contact record keeps its source, statuses, qualification and outcome. The ledger is per account and stored locally, never uploaded.

Applies to Ins Autopilot 3.22 and later · Updated 2026-10-18

What this helps you do

The Relationships list with Relationships selected in the navigation rail: contact rows showing username, source, state, waiting time and protection. — Figure 1One record per contact, with the context next to the person. This is what turns a follow-up from an archive into a decision.

Every message you send creates context: who this person is, where you found them, whether they replied, and what you decided about them. Without a place to keep that, you end up scrolling through old conversations trying to remember.

Relationships is that place. It holds one record per contact and keeps the context next to the person, so a follow-up is a decision rather than an archaeology project.

One ledger per account, stored locally

The ledger is scoped to each Instagram account. If you work with more than one, their contacts stay separate.
It is stored in your local browser.
It is not uploaded. Your notes, your qualification answers and your recorded outcomes stay on your machine.
The one exception is a tracked link: the target URL and an opaque contact reference go to the service so an open can be attributed. See How tracked links work.

Figure 2The ledger lives with this browser. Moving to another browser profile does not carry it across.

Local storage also means the ledger lives with this browser. Moving to another browser, or clearing the extension's data, does not carry the record across.

What a contact record contains

Source — which run, list or place this contact came from.
Follow status — whether you are following them.
DM status — what happened to the message you sent, in the same vocabulary as the delivery record.
Waiting time — how long it has been since the last touch, so you can see who has gone quiet.
Qualification — the answers you filled in yourself about whether this person is a fit.
Outcome — the result you recorded, which is a manual decision.
Protected — whether this contact is shielded from cleanup.

What protect means

Protecting a contact is a promise you make to yourself: this person is not to be cleaned up.

Protected contacts are never queued for deletion. Whatever happens to your follow relationships elsewhere, a protected contact stays in the ledger with everything you recorded about them.

Protection is about your ledger, not about Instagram. It changes nothing on the platform — it simply means the extension will not propose this contact for removal.

Figure 3Protection is about your ledger and what the extension proposes — not about what the platform does.

Protection is reversible and it is yours. As long as it is on, no cleanup pass will suggest removing that contact.

How it connects to Today, Activity and Cleanup

Today reads the ledger to decide who needs your attention and why, using its five fixed reasons.
Activity is the timeline of recorded facts attached to a contact — what happened and when.
Cleanup proposes unfollow candidates, and skips anyone who is protected.
History keeps the delivery record of what was sent; the ledger keeps the relationship around it.
You can review, edit and export contacts from here, so the context is not locked inside a run you have already finished.

Figure 4Relationships is not a separate list you maintain. It is the record the rest of the product reads from.

Limits and important behavior

The ledger is per Instagram account and per browser. There is no shared, cloud-synced address book.
Nothing in the ledger is uploaded except the tracked-link exception described above.
Protect prevents cleanup proposals. It does not prevent you from unfollowing manually, and it does not change anything on Instagram.
A recorded outcome such as Lost is a manual end state: it stops related follow-up work and stays on the record.
The ledger holds what the extension recorded and what you entered. It does not invent facts about a contact.

Automation carries risk that depends on your account's state and on platform limits. Keeping good records makes your own decisions easier; it does not change what the platform allows.

Troubleshooting

My contacts disappeared.: The ledger is stored locally in this browser and scoped to the Instagram account you are signed in to. Check that you are on the same account and the same browser profile where the contacts were recorded.
Why is a contact still in the ledger after I unfollowed them?: Unfollowing changes the follow relationship, not the record. History and the relationship stay readable — that is the point of keeping a ledger.
Is my contact list uploaded anywhere?: No. It is local. The only thing that leaves your browser is the tracked-link record: a target URL and an opaque reference to the contact.
How do I keep someone out of Cleanup?: Turn on protection for that contact. Protected contacts are never queued for deletion.
Where do I see what actually happened with someone?: Open the contact and look at the Activity timeline, or check History for the delivery record. See Contact timeline.

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