Built https://www.spybroski.com/ after getting frustrated with existing Instagram story viewers that were either broken, ad-heavy, or required sketchy permissions. Technical approach:

Server-side requests to avoid CORS issues No user data storage or tracking Clean vanilla JS frontend, minimal dependencies Download functionality using blob URLs

Why this exists: Instagram's web interface requires login to view stories, but sometimes you just want to check something quickly without the social graph implications. existing tools were either unreliable or loaded with ads and trackers. Current stats:

~10k users organically No monetization yet (considering premium features) Hosting costs are minimal thanks to efficient caching

The technical challenge was mostly around Instagram's API changes and rate limiting. had to implement some clever request batching to stay under their radar. Happy to discuss the technical implementation or answer questions about building tools in this space. also curious if others have tackled similar social media API challenges. Code isn't open source yet but considering it if there's interest.