mcps

Recipe

Instagram carousels with Claude — from one idea to a finished post

Turn a single idea or note into a 5–10 slide branded carousel in under 30 minutes — without leaving the chat with Claude.

30 minutes (10 to set up the first time, 20 per carousel after) beginner 3 connectors for Creators who publish weekly to Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Threads, Telegram

What you'll need

Pencil Generates the slide layouts programmatically — fonts, colors, images, position. The actual carousel renders here.
Required
Figma Pulls your existing brand kit (colors, logos, fonts) and lets you nudge the final result.
Optional
Memory Remembers your voice, frames, and brand tokens across sessions so you don't re-explain them.
Optional

Do this, in order

  1. 1

    Tell Claude what the carousel is about

    I want to make an Instagram carousel about [your topic]. Audience: [who]. Goal: [save / share / convert]. Length: 5–10 slides. Voice: [describe it or say 'use the saved one'].

    You'll get: Claude returns a structured outline: hook (slide 1), value points (slides 2-N), summary (last slide). Approve or edit.

  2. 2

    Apply your brand kit

    Use the [your-brand] kit from Figma — primary color, secondary, body font, headline font, logo placement bottom-right at 8% opacity.

    You'll get: Claude confirms it has the kit (or asks for a Figma file URL to read). Once confirmed, the kit applies to all slides.

  3. 3

    Generate the slides

    Render all slides as 1080×1350 PNGs using Pencil. Slide 1 has the hook in the largest type. Each value slide has a number badge in the corner.

    You'll get: Pencil returns N PNG files. Claude shows you previews. You approve or adjust per slide.

  4. 4

    Export and post

    Export the final set as a folder of PNGs named slide-01.png … slide-N.png. Print the folder path.

    You'll get: A local folder of finished slides ready to drag into Instagram.

You're done when

A 5–10 slide branded Instagram carousel saved to disk in under 30 minutes from idea to file. Voice matches your saved brand voice. Repeatable weekly with a one-line prompt.

Why this workflow exists

If you publish to Instagram, the per-post overhead is brutal. A 5-slide carousel takes 30–60 minutes by hand — even when you already know what you want to say. Most of that time is mechanical: opening Figma, pasting brand colors, aligning text, exporting at the right size, naming files.

Claude can do all of that. What it needed was a connection to a tool that actually renders pixels. Pencil MCP is that connection. Once it’s wired in, your role shrinks to “tell Claude what to make” and “approve the previews”. Everything in between disappears.

The first time you run this workflow it takes ~30 minutes — most of that is one-time: installing Pencil MCP, telling Claude your voice, saving your brand kit. After that, it’s 15–20 minutes per carousel.

Install in 10 minutes

You need three things: Pencil MCP installed, optional Figma MCP for brand assets, optional Memory MCP for voice persistence.

1. Install Pencil MCP

# In your Claude Desktop / Cursor / Windsurf config:
claude mcp add pencil -- npx -y @pencil/mcp

Set PENCIL_API_KEY in the env block. Get it at pencil.so/account.

2. (Optional) Install Figma MCP

Same pattern. You only need this if you want Claude to read your existing Figma brand kit.

claude mcp add figma -- npx -y @figma/mcp

Set FIGMA_TOKEN (Personal Access Token from Figma → Settings → Account).

3. (Optional) Install Memory MCP

This is the official Anthropic memory server. It lets Claude remember your brand voice across sessions.

claude mcp add memory -- npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-memory

No env vars needed.

4. Load the skills

If you have the carousel-content-expert and visual-brief skills in your local skills directory (~/.claude/skills/), they’ll be loaded automatically. If not — they’re optional, the workflow works without them but the output is less polished.

The first run

Open a fresh Claude conversation. Paste step 1’s prompt, replacing the bracketed parts with your actual topic. Claude will start an outline. From here you’re approving and adjusting, not designing.

If the outline looks good, move to step 2. If not, push back: “make slide 3 stronger, it’s the same as slide 2.” This is editing, not generation.

By step 4 you have a folder of PNGs. Drag them into Instagram in order. Done.

What success looks like

You opened Claude with an idea. You closed Claude with a finished carousel folder. Total wall-clock time: 20–30 minutes. The brand looks like your brand. The voice sounds like your voice. You didn’t open Figma once.

Now do it again next week. The setup is one-time. The recipe is repeatable.

Going further

If something breaks

Pencil renders text outside the safe area
Fix: Tell Claude to constrain text to a 60px inner padding. The skill `visual-brief` includes the padding rule by default — make sure it's loaded.
Brand colors look slightly off
Fix: Figma exports colors in display-P3 by default; Pencil uses sRGB. Pass the hex values directly to Pencil instead of asking it to read from the Figma file.
Claude doesn't remember my voice between runs
Fix: Add Memory MCP to your client and prompt once: 'remember my carousel voice: [3-sentence description]'. Future sessions will pull it automatically.
Pencil API key error
Fix: Pencil needs PENCIL_API_KEY in your client config env block. Get it at pencil.so/account → API.

People ask their AI

“make instagram carousels”“turn a note into an instagram carousel”“generate branded social slides”

Related

Pencil Figma content creator