AI commentary

AI commentary · Help

Looking at numbers is one job; seeing what they are telling you is another. AI commentary reads the metrics for the period you selected, or the performance of a single post, and explains in two or three plain paragraphs what happened, why it may have happened, and what to try next. This guide explains how the commentary is produced, where it is stored, and how its instruction is changed.

⚠️ Note: Generating a commentary spends AI credits. That is why it is started manually and never runs just because you opened the screen. Generating one requires automation edit permission; a user who can only view reports will read an existing commentary but cannot produce a new one.

There are two separate commentaries

The panel offers AI commentary in two places, and they work differently.

The period commentary

It sits in the column to the right of the chart on Insights › Overview. The panel's description says: "The period's numbers are read by AI; the commentary is stored for this period."

Only numbers are sent to the model: the period boundaries, the totals and change percentages of the ten metrics, the follower count, the highest and lowest reach days, and the top five buckets of the audience breakdowns. No account name, contact detail or message content is sent.

The post commentary

It sits on a post's analysis page, reached from Insights › Posts. Its description differs: "The caption, metrics and cover image are read by the AI; the commentary is stored for this post."

Three things go to the model here: the post's details and caption, its metrics, and its cover image. The image is sent because the model has to see the content to answer "why did this post work". For video posts the cover frame is read, not the video itself.

Generating a commentary

The steps are the same in both places:

Open the relevant screen (for the overview, select the period too).
Click Comment with AI.
The button changes to Writing…; wait.
When you see the "Commentary ready." notification, the text appears in the panel.

Once a commentary exists the button is renamed Comment again. Commenting again overwrites the old text; two commentaries are never kept side by side.

A byline sits under the text: which model wrote it and when.

Where the commentary is stored

This is the most commonly misunderstood point:

The period commentary is stored per period. Its key is the period's first and last day. A commentary you generated for "Last 7 days" will not appear when you select the same pill tomorrow — because tomorrow "last 7 days" is a different window. A fixed window (last month, say) shows the same commentary every time you open it.
The post commentary is stored per post. Whenever you open that post, the same commentary is there.

When no commentary exists yet, the panel reads: "No commentary for this period yet." That does not mean the data is empty.

The commentary prompt setting (post commentary only)

A collapsible box called Commentary prompt setting sits under the commentary panel on a post's analysis page. It is only drawn for users who may generate commentaries.

Click the Commentary prompt setting row to open the box.
Write your own instruction in the Instruction given to the AI field.
Click Save prompt. You will see the "Prompt saved." notification.

Its rules are:

The setting applies to every post commentary on this account — it is not per post. The box lives on a post's page because the person who wants to change the instruction is looking at exactly that screen.
Leaving the field empty deletes the setting and restores the default instruction. There is no such thing as an empty prompt.
The box opens empty the first time, with the default instruction shown as placeholder text. Seeing that placeholder does not mean it has been saved.
The instruction can be at most 2,000 characters.

The default instruction asks for two short paragraphs about the post: what it is about and how the numbers say it was received, plus one concrete suggestion to try next time. It also tells the model not to invent information, not to comment on metrics it was not given, and not to treat a metric marked "unknown" as zero.

The period commentary's instruction cannot be changed; it is fixed.

A concrete example

At the end of September a boutique selects the Last month period and clicks Comment with AI. The commentary says three things: reach rose 18% while saves barely moved; most of the rise is concentrated in two days (from Meta's highest-reach-day figure); and its suggestion is to repeat the content format that worked on those two days throughout the month.

The same boutique then opens its widest-reaching post and generates the post commentary. Because this one also sees the caption and the image, it says "the absence of pricing in the caption may have driven up the comment count" — an inference the period commentary could never make.

If the panel does not appear at all

The AI commentary panel is not drawn at all in four cases. You will not see an empty box either; the panel simply is not there:

AI is switched off for that portfolio. The plan or a portfolio setting decides this.
There is no AI key. If the account uses its own key and none has been entered, the panel does not open.
The AI credits have run out. See The AI credits ran out.
The post commentary is a separate sub-feature. The period commentary can be on while the post commentary is off; the two are enabled separately per plan.

If the panel is there but shows only an explanatory line instead of a button, a permission is missing: the line reads "Generating one requires automation edit permission."

Limitations and known issues

With no metrics at all, no commentary is generated. If every metric and the follower count are unknown for the period, the model is never called, no credits are spent, and you are told there is nothing to comment on.
A post with neither metrics nor a caption is not commented on. The same rule applies on the post side.
The period commentary is at most three short paragraphs, the post commentary two. The length is deliberately limited so that credit use stays predictable.
The commentary is written in the account's language. Whatever the account's language setting is, the text arrives in it.
The text is cut at 2,000 characters.
If the AI hits a rate limit no commentary is produced and you see a warning; try again in a few minutes.
If the cover image cannot be read, the post commentary is produced without it. You still get a commentary, just written without seeing the content.
A commentary is an interpretation. The model receives only the numbers it is given; it knows nothing outside the panel (your campaign, your ad budget, the season).

Used in the right place, the commentary turns the time you spend reading numbers into time spent making decisions.