What began as a personal project to reclaim attention soon became something deeper: a reflection on how we build, why we create, and what it means to design for human flourishing – not just social good.
What is Instagram CLI? Skim over my technical blog here instead.
The Paradox of Time
In Le Petit Prince, the little prince meets a merchant selling pills that eliminate the need to drink water, supposedly saving 53 minutes a day. The prince replies that he would rather spend those 53 minutes walking to a cool spring.
That moment reveals a paradox at the heart of modern life. So many of our tools promise to save time – instant messaging, food delivery, on-demand everything – but do we really feel freer? Staying connected no longer requires letters or visits; just a few taps. And yet, it is apparent that social media often steals more time than it saves.
Instagram CLI came to life after Of Sand and Stars, my Christmas podcast where we begun the first episode by discussing the illusion of time-saving technology and how social media affect the coming-of-age experience – a conversation filled with data, history, and lived experience.
Instagram CLI wasn’t built to change the world – it came from a personal frustration. I was tired of watching my attention dissolve into algorithmic “brainrot,” my depth and authenticity chipped away by noise and manipulation, and meaningful conversations reduced to a battle of short-form content. I wanted something simple—something that stripped away the distractions and helped me reconnect with the people I truly care about.
Instagram CLI cuts through the clutter and turns hours of passive scrolling into minutes of intentional connection.
A Social Experiment That Worked
Three months ago, I described Instagram CLI as a “social experiment” on LinkedIn during its launch. The question I asked: How salvageable is our humanity in the age of distraction? Today, I write this with a hopeful answer.
A month ago, I fully deleted the Instagram app from my phone. The web version still felt cluttered. So I went all in on using only Instagram CLI. The impact stunned me: my weekly screen time dropped by 60%. That’s over 7 hours a week – or 364 hours a year (15 entire days!) —- reclaimed.
And I didn’t lose touch with anyone. I still chatted, still connected – but with far more intention. I could finally live the idea someone once shared with me at UBC: if you saved just one hour a day, you could read War and Peace in a month.
With this reclaimed time, I immersed myself in literature from around the world – English, French, Russian, Chinese. I dedicated more hours to thinking, creating, and contributing to my research, startup, internship, personal projects, and other meaningful pursuits. I reconnected with old friends in person, having conversations that stretched for hours instead of settling for shallow interactions. I took long walks or simply sat in silence, letting my thoughts wander. Most importantly, I rediscovered a sense of peace and clarity that had long been buried beneath reels and endless scrolling. I haven’t watched a single reel in three weeks.
Instagram CLI turned time lost to brainrot into time spent cultivating your garden and harvesting your bean field.
Before quitting Instagram, I was twice invited to something called the “USC Ice Bucket Challenge” for mental health awareness. But I found it ironical: how does chasing likes solve mental health issues? The real remedy, I believe, lies in protecting your attention, your soul from the pull of bad technology. That’s what Instagram CLI was built to do.
Creating with Purpose
To create is to reclaim freedom – and this project reminded me of that. What began as a simple open-source tool soon became something more: a quiet manifesto for how technology should serve us, not the other way around.
At the heart of this is a distinction that often gets lost in today’s tech culture: building technology for human flourishing is not the same as building technology for social good. The latter is frequently shaped by optics, metrics, and large-scale narratives—defined by engagement rates, awareness campaigns, and “impact” dashboards. Social media platforms are a prime example: while marketed as tools for empowerment, they often reduce people to users and attention to currency.
Instagram CLI, by contrast, aims for something quieter but deeper. It’s built on the belief that people are not means to an end, but ends in themselves—each of us holding intrinsic worth, capable of growth, thought, and intentional living.
It’s not about making the world a better place; it’s about giving you the tools to become a better person.
This is my philosophy of design. Good technology should honor a person’s agency and attention, not erode it. If we blindly pursue what appears “socially good” without examining the values beneath, we risk drifting toward the kind of future imagined in Huxley’s Brave New World: comfort without freedom, connection without depth, stimulation without meaning.
That’s where creators have a responsibility – not just to build, but to ask difficult questions. To challenge assumptions, imagine alternatives, and create things that express what feels unjust or broken. Technology isn’t a neutral tool or a battlefield between good and evil; it’s in our society and our psyche. It interacts with each of us in subtle, deeply personal ways. Great creators learn to notice that complexity – and build from it.
This ethos reminds me of a passage recently read from Thoreau’s Walden
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived… I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…
Building technology for human flourishing doesn’t mean rejecting modern life or disappearing into the woods. It means creating tools that help us live more deliberately, more fully – right here, in the midst of the world.
If you’re working on something truly personal, don’t measure its value by likes or downloads alone. Instagram CLI has passed 5,000 downloads on PyPI, which is encouraging—but what truly matters is what it gave me: clarity, time, and the space to live with more intention.
