Claude Cowork | Instagram Reels on Autopilot — Turn Photos into Cinematic Reels Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 By the end of this video, you'll have a fully automated workflow that takes a photo of your product or services and turns it into a cinematic social media reel, consistent, on-brand, with no video editing skills required. We're going to apply the demo use case for a real estate business that has plenty of listing photos, but no video content. And while we're building this for real estate business today, the same workflow applies to any businesses that wants to turn images into branded video content at scale.

00:22 As always, I'll walk you through step-by-step in plain English, so you don't need any technical or programming background to set this up. Here's how the workflow to work. First, Cloud CoWork is going to fetch a photo from a Google Drive folder. These are your existing product photos, and in this case, home for sale images. It will then push to an image-to-video generation platform like Key AI, before sending it over to a tool called Botato, which automates social media postings.

00:45 In the past, we used to build this type of workflow on N to N, which is another automation platform, but now with CoWork, we do it end-to-end just having Cloud interact directly with these tools. Real quick, if you find videos like these useful, please consider subscribing and hit that like button. It really does help. Now, let's dive right in. Okay, so if you're here, I'm assuming that you already have Cloud CoWork installed and are familiar with the differences between chat and CoWork.

01:06 And if you haven't, you can go over to the link down below to download Cloud CoWork for Mac or, you know, whatever system that you're using, because you do need Cloud CoWork to execute this as well as to put it on schedule so that it automatically triggers and automates the entire workflow without you having to intervene each time. Now, one of the good things about Cloud CoWork is that it actually builds up the memory within your local system.

01:25 So, if you were to build a project, that's where the memory will stay, and it actually creates persistent memory that way. So, here once you get into your Cloud CoWork instance, the first place you want to get to is actually projects. And over here, you want to go over to create new project. And we're going to select start from scratch here. And the reason why we want to create a new project for this specific workflow, or this specific project, is because it's going to retain the persistent memory of the brand, of what

01:50 you want to do, of all the things or instructions, your preferences that you have told it before within the project. So, it's almost like having a assistant that works within a specific scope of project, understands the project deeply. Without you having to tell it again and again. All right, so in this case, I'm going to call this Paradise Homes Real Estate project.

02:06 All right, so we're saying that this is a business. And instruction, I'm going to leave it blank for now. So, for the project location, we're going to leave it as is. It's going to create a folder within my document Cloud folder, which is the default folder. Of course, if you want to save it anywhere else, you can change it yourself if you want to. So, here I'm going to hit create, and it spins up the project.

02:27 And as you can see on your right-hand corner over here, in the box, you'll see that the memory is being saved within your computer. So, every time you ask Cloud to do something within this project, it's going to refer to the memory or the database repository of the files that are within your local system. So, you're not really sharing anything up in the cloud, you know, it's not exposed to anything.

02:48 It just sits in your computer. So, in terms of security, if you're worried about business sensitivity and stuff like that, customer database, you can be rest assured that actually sits within your local system. Just like any other files that you save within your computer. So, here the very first thing that you want to do, you want to connect it to all the tools that we need today.

03:04 All right, so we need three tools primarily. One is the Google Drive tools for it to fetch the photos that you already have. So, these are photos of your product, in this case, you know, homes for sales. And then the second one is actually Key AI. So, this is the image-to-video generation platform, using models like VEO 3, Cedance, perhaps you've heard of those.

03:24 And of course, this is not the only platform, and I'm not sponsored by them. It's just one of the platforms that I use. You can use other platforms like Wave Video and File and stuff like that, but Key AI happens to have the MCP connector, which I'll show in a little bit. And last but not least, we're going to use Botato, which is a social media automation tool, which I've been using for a long time, which I find quite handy in terms of automating the social media posting to not just Instagram, but TikTok, Facebook,

03:46 Threads, X, you name it, they probably have it. All right, so I'm going to show you all of that and how to connect it in a little bit. But first, we're going to connect it to Google Drive. All right, so here I already have a Drive search connected, but if you don't, what you can do is you want to hit add connector, and then here you can search for Drive, and Google Drive will pop up, and you can click on that.

04:06 And as you can see, I mine's already connected, but if you haven't, it will say connect here, and it's just a one-click connect. It will show a pop-up on your Google browser, and you just have to authorize it to allow it to connect. So, one little tip is that you need to be logged in on the same email that you have for your Cloud subscription. So, again, I also forgot to mention earlier in the video, in order to use Cloud CoWork, you actually need to be subscribed to at least the pro subscription on Cloud.

04:29 It's 20 bucks a month, and I definitely think it's well worth it. All right, so once you authorize the Google pop-up, it will say connect, and it will show basically what you're seeing right here. So, then you would have, if you were to go to your connectors, Google as part of your tools. And ignore the other tools here. These are just some of the tools that I've connected in the past.

04:45 But the second thing you want to do is you want to connect it to Botato. So, here again, we're going to go to connectors. So, there are two ways you can connect it from over here. You can also go to customize. It's the same thing, you know, and select connectors from here. And essentially, you want to hit plus button over here. So, Botato, because it doesn't have an off-the-shelf connector with Anthropic, what you want to do is you want to add custom connector here.

05:07 All right, so a pop-up will show with the name and remote MCP server URL. So, at this point, what you want to do is go over to botato.com. And again, if you haven't seen this in my past videos, Botato is a social media automation tool. Of course, it can now create content on its own as well, even though these are going to be purely AI-generated content, but if that's something that if you find useful in your workflow, you can do that as well.

05:30 But we're using Key AI today because we want to generate a video based off a image of a product, right? So, an existing product, so we don't want just random image or video created by the AI. But anyway, once you get into Botato, what you want to do is just sign up. You know, in this case, I already have an account, so I'm going to log back in. After you sign up, go over to settings, and you'll see that you can connect all your social media platforms over here.

05:53 And now, as you can see, I've connected my Instagram to Botato. I haven't connected everything else just yet because I'm not really active on the rest. So, here what you want to do is actually go up to the settings section, and go over to API. And here you'll see that there are a couple ways to connect to Botato. In the past, when we were using N to N, we were using the API key.

06:13 But here, there's a very simple way to connect to your Cloud desktop, which is, as you can see here, going to settings, connectors, which we've already done. So, what we need to do here is just take the name, which is Botato here, all right? Go back to your Cloud instance, paste the name Botato, and then for the remote MCP URL, well, it's basically this URL right here, and we're going to paste it in, and we're going to hit connect.

06:33 And now it's going to say it's going to pop up as custom, but it's going to say it's not connected yet. So, what we want to do is just hit connect again on the same browser of the email that you've logged into your Cloud instance. It will show that, you know, it's going to ask you to authorize it, and we're going to approve access with Cloud. Yes. And there we go.

06:49 Now you're connected to Botato. All right. If you're considering taking Botato out for a spin, you can check out my referral link down below, as well as using my promo code Mark20 for 20% off on your Botato subscription. So, check it out. I've been using it for months now, and I think it really helps in terms of the convenience of automating my social media stuff.

07:09 So, now the next thing we want to do is to connect to Key AI. This one is slightly trickier because it doesn't have, again, a simple way to connect. But if you were to go to Key AI, and basically is key.ai, and if you're not already familiar with it, what you want to do is just sign up and log in. So, once you've signed up and logged into Key AI, what you want to do is actually grab the API keys from the API key section.

07:31 And of course, in order to do so, you need to pay or go into billing and actually top up at least a $5 credit. This is basically the credits to be used for the model to generate the image-to-video. But again, Key AI is probably one of those more cost-efficient platforms I've seen, so I think it'll go a long way. Just top up $5, and after that, just go over to API keys and generate your API keys.

07:52 I've got a few API keys already generated here. So, what you can do, if you haven't, just hit create new API key, enter the name. I'm just going to do it one more time just so you can see. CoWork Paradise 2, let's say. And you'll see that the API key shows up here. And again, you want to keep it secret. I'm going to revoke this right after the recording, but just copy that, and, you know, copy it somewhere safe, all right?

08:15 And now, how do we connect Cloud CoWork to the Key AI MCP? Now, thankfully, we already have a community MCP built up on GitHub, which, if you're technically inclined, you can go through the documentation, etc. But if you're not, essentially, I already have the command saved in my description down below, which you can just download and copy and paste.

08:32 What you want to do is just go over to apps, and look for terminal. So, type in terminal, and this, you know, black little screen's going to pop up if you haven't seen it before. And what you want to do is just copy the command chunk that I have pasted down in the description below. And before you hit enter, what you want to do is you see the part where it says your Key AI API key here?

08:53 We want to replace that, so delete the whole thing, and just paste the API key that you got from Key AI earlier. And once you've done that, just hit enter, and there we go. That's it. You are technically now have set up the MCP bridge from your computer to Key AI. So, when I say MCP, what does that all mean, right? So, you can think of it simply just like a bridge between your local system to Key AI.

09:14 So, that way, when Cloud CoWork wants to leverage or use Key AI as a tool, what it does is it actually calls on this MCP server that you built in now within your local system in order to work directly with Key AI. So, once you've done that, what you want to do is fully quit Cloud, all right? So, you want to restart Cloud CoWork or Cloud Desktop. What you want to do is just right-click on the Cloud icon, and hit quit, and open up Cloud again, and go to projects, and go back to Paradise Homes Real Estate.

09:43 And this time, we're going to just ask and check, "Can you check your connection capable/capabilities with Key AI MCP?" All right, so I'm just going to open up the chat box here and then it's loading data. So, as you can see it says Claude wants to use list task from Key AI. I'm going to allow for this list. Okay. So, now it says Key AI MCP connection is working.

10:08 Here's a summary of what I found. Connections active, tools that I can use image generation, video generation, audio, etc. Right? Okay. So, now we've got both of the tools that we need created. Now, one last thing that we need to set up before we run the actual workflow is we would just want to add some skills, right? So, if you go to the plus button here and go to manage skills.

10:27 So, here we're just going to add a couple of skills that I've created pertaining to Botato, pertaining to Key, pertaining to image generation, prompting, etc. So, that it just makes the workflow a lot easier. So, what skill is is basically telling Claude that, "Hey, whenever I say that, you know, create videos from an image, use Botato and this is how you should be using Botato.

10:47 This is how you should be using Key AI." Right? So, it's just like sort of recipe book for it to follow so that it is more efficient way and it's not trying to figure itself out every time it's going through the workflow, right? So, we're going to hit the plus sign here under create skill, we're going to hit upload skill. And again, I've uploaded it down in the description below so you can go and just download the Botato skill, the Key skill, and real estate skills.

11:09 So, these three skills and just upload them. So, it's a simple drag and drop for the upload. So, I dragged it from my download folder and dropped it in and essentially now you'll see that it has now the Key video skills which is just a markdown file again, just a recipe guidebook. And the Botato Instagram skills as well as the real estate real skill.

11:29 Okay. So, now we're good to go. Let's go back to the projects and under Paradise Homes real estate, now what we're going to ask it to do is we're going to ask it to create an Instagram reel based on a beach house one in the image database folder AWM is a brand new beachfront villa in Baja, California, Mexico ocean access, modern construction, luxury feel, golden hour vibe, post it to Instagram.

11:49 Now, what am I talking about? Well, now I already have a folder created of the images for the beach houses. So, it looks like this. Looks like this, right? So, this is just obviously a demo folder, right? So, the real thing might have hundreds of images and it might have different titles and stuff like that. So, you can actually pick which one you're talking about and if you have different properties you that you're trying to sell, obviously you're going to have different folders.

12:11 So, you can actually tell it which folder it is in natural language and tell it which image you want or if you want have it pick at random and that works as well, right? So, here I'm telling specifically it's beach house number one in the image database folder AWM is a brand new beachfront villa, etc. And then I want it to create a video based on that image and post it to Instagram.

12:30 So, I'm going to hit let's go, right? So, now it's creating a new task over here. I'm going to just double click that to see what it's working on. So, it's going to ask me a couple of things to, you know, have the permission to go into the workspace and look for the right image. The first time you're running this it's going to keep popping up asking you for permission and you just want to hit allow.

12:48 The other way of doing it is also to go to customize and under connected you can allow all the permissions that it has. But, typically a good practice for you to just understand what kind of permission it's asking, what it's trying to do. So, at least for the first run I would typically just leave it on and I'll prove it myself. And once I put it into an automated scheduled workflow, that's when maybe I'll just toggle it to always allow.

13:11 So, it was having a little bit of trouble trying to find the files. So, I actually went to my folder and just actually gave it the link of the image that I want. So, sometimes it does find a hard time trying to go through your directories and and folders and stuff like that. So, it might be worthwhile trying to spend some time architecting your project folders and giving an index on where things are so that it doesn't have to spend a long time trying to go through every single folder trying to find which image that you

13:36 might be referring to. But, you know, if all else fails you can always give it that particular image link for it to work on. So, again it's going to keep asking me for permission, especially on the first run. Now, it's asking me for approval on Botato. Just going to approve that. It's writing the caption and posting it on to Instagram. Now, in my instruction I did not ask it to check with me whether or not I wanted to see the video.

13:59 So, it's not doing that. It's going over and posting it. But, you can always put it in the instruction, you know, don't post it on Instagram just yet. Give it to me in whatever format you want, email, whatnot and let me approve it before posting it on Instagram. In this case, it's just going to go ahead and post it on Instagram. All right. So, looks like the video is live on Instagram.

14:16 It actually gives me the link here. So, let's click on that and see what it looks like. All right. So, I'm looking all right. I don't know if you can hear the audio. Cool looking, okay. And then if you look at the caption, this is a brand new Let me just see. This is a brand new beachfront villa in Baja, California as where modern luxury meets raw beauty of the Pacific, floor-to-ceiling glass, fresh construction, direct ocean access, all wraps into a perfect golden hour glow.

14:39 Yeah, looking pretty good. Again, the actual image came off was like this, right? So, this is the reel that has been created. Which to me again, you know, the photorealism something that we can work on a little bit more. But, as a first try I think it's going okay. If you're happy with that, what you can do is actually you can ask it to schedule. So, for example, I could say, "Please schedule this workflow for every Monday 1:00 p.m."

15:07 Let's say, right? So, if you ask it to do that, it's going to just set the schedule for this workflow and then it's going to be occurring on every Monday it's going to post it for you. Of course, it's probably not the best instruction. You probably want to tell it to pick a different image and stuff like that. But, you can obviously iterate and depending on, you know, the project that you want to push and the type of house that you want to promote, you can further work on that.

15:26 So, once you do that, it's going to ask you for permission to schedule. So, if you hit schedule, it's going to create the recurring task every Monday property reel scheduled. And where you can see these scheduled tasks is if you go over to the left-hand side bar here, there's a scheduled tab and once you hit that, you can see that these are the scheduled tasks that I have set up but paused.

15:47 And here every Monday it says at 1:00 p.m. Monday property reel. Of course, you can, you know, stop that or pause that or delete it or even run now as you like. Okay, so last but not least, of course that's just proof of concept of how you can run these things. But, in order for you to have better brand feel, better brand messaging even in terms of the caption, what you need to do is actually built up a good architecture of memory and contacts.

16:10 And again, like I said, when you work in a project within Co-work, the advantage is it can have these web of knowledge within your local system, right? You might have seen in other YouTube videos where people leverage tools like Obsidian to have a map of, you know, knowledge in terms of their system that they're working with and stuff like that. So, it might look something like this.

16:29 So, this is something that you build over time. But, even without having fancy tools like Obsidian, what you can do is actually build the project index and memory architecture within your local system the way you would build it for your companies, right? So, I'm sure you probably have a similar architecture already that you're working with. What you can do just port it over into Claude and it could actually, you know, have a better way of understanding what your brand image is like, what your company does, and stuff

16:54 like that. And therefore, being able to output a better result for you. So, that's it. That's an easy way of setting up a fully automated workflow from image to video generation for any products or services that you might want to promote on social media, whether that be on TikTok, Instagram, or any other social media platforms out there simply using a couple tools as we've shown here directly on Claude Co-work with Claude desktop.

17:14 Now, if you find videos like these useful, please consider subscribing and hit that like button. It does help a lot and I'll see you on the next one.