How Vela works
Plain English explanations of Vela's features, settings, and automated behaviours. No technical jargon — just what you need to know to get the most out of the platform.
How a post moves from upload to Instagram
Every post in Vela moves through a series of stages from the moment you upload it to the moment it goes live on Instagram. Understanding these stages helps you know exactly where your content is at any time.
Status stages
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| ready | You've uploaded the file. Vela is waiting to prepare it — generate a caption, hashtags, and pick the best time to post. |
| scheduled | The AI has generated the caption and hashtags and picked a posting time. The post is queued and waiting for that time to arrive. |
| posting | Vela is actively uploading the post to Instagram right now. |
| posted | Successfully published to Instagram. Analytics will start collecting shortly. |
| failed | Something went wrong after 3 automatic retry attempts. You'll receive an email notification with details and instructions to reset it. |
| archived | The post has been manually archived and won't be processed. |
How Vela generates captions, hashtags, and picks posting times
Every 30 minutes, Vela automatically checks for posts in ready status and prepares them for posting. This is where the AI does its work — analysing your content and generating everything needed to maximise engagement.
How it works
Gathers intelligence
Before writing a single word, Vela pulls together your top performing posts, the latest AI recommendations, trending hashtags in your niche, and any already-scheduled posts so it doesn't overlap timing.
Analyses your content
For videos, Vela transcribes the audio so the AI understands what's actually happening in the clip. For images, the AI looks at the photo directly. Captions are written about your actual content, not just the title you gave it.
Generates caption and hashtags
Using all of that context, Claude generates an engaging caption tailored to your niche with a call to action designed to drive saves — one of the most important early engagement signals on Instagram. Hashtags are selected from trending intelligence data.
Picks the best posting time
The AI analyses when your previous posts performed best and picks an optimal posting time, factoring in your audience's active hours and avoiding times already taken by other scheduled posts. If it can't determine a good time, it defaults to 5:30 PM CST the following day.
Marks post as scheduled
The post is updated with the generated caption, hashtags, and scheduled time. Status changes to scheduled. From here, the Vela Poster takes over.
How scheduled posts get published automatically
Every minute, Vela checks for posts that are scheduled and due to go out. When it finds one, it handles the entire publishing process automatically — no action required from you.
How it works
Checks for due posts
Every minute, Vela looks for any post with status scheduled whose posting time has arrived.
Marks as posting
The post is immediately marked as posting to prevent it from being picked up twice in the same cycle.
Uploads to Instagram
The media file is retrieved from storage and uploaded to Instagram along with the AI-generated caption and hashtags. Videos are posted as Reels. Images are posted as Feed posts.
Records the result
Once Instagram confirms the post is live, Vela saves the Instagram post ID, marks the post as posted, and records the exact time it went live. Analytics collection begins shortly after.
Automatic recovery when something goes wrong
Sometimes a post can get stuck in posting status — usually because of a temporary issue with the Instagram API, a network hiccup, or a file problem. Rather than leaving it stuck forever, Vela's Post Monitor automatically detects and recovers these situations.
How it works
Checks every 10 minutes
The monitor runs every 10 minutes, looking for any post that has been stuck in posting status for more than 30 minutes.
Investigates the failure
When a stuck post is found, the monitor pulls the error details from the most recent failed execution — which node failed, what the error message was, and when it happened.
Resets and notifies you
The post is automatically reset to ready so it will be picked up and rescheduled on the next Prepare Posts cycle. You receive an email with the full error details, retry count, and a direct link to the failed execution log.
Gives up after 3 attempts
If the same post fails 3 times, the monitor stops retrying and marks it as failed. You'll receive a final email with instructions to manually reset it once the underlying problem is fixed.
What each number on your dashboard means
Once a post is live on Instagram, Vela starts collecting performance data. Here's what each metric means and why it matters.
Computed metrics
| Metric | How it's calculated | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Viral Velocity | Views ÷ hours since posting | Measures how fast the post is gaining traction. A high score early on signals Instagram is pushing it in the algorithm. |
| Save Rate | Saves ÷ reach × 100 | The percentage of people who saw the post and saved it. Even 1–2% is excellent. This is your most important metric to grow. |
| Engagement Rate | (Likes + comments + saves + shares) ÷ reach × 100 | Overall interaction rate. Shows how compelling your content is relative to how many people saw it. |
Vela polls Instagram on a smart frequency curve
Vela doesn't check your stats at a fixed interval — it uses a smart polling schedule that checks more frequently when a post is new (when things are changing fast) and less frequently as it ages (when growth slows down). This balances data freshness with efficiency.
| Post age | How often stats are updated |
|---|---|
| Under 30 minutes | Every 5 minutes |
| 30 minutes – 2 hours | Every 15 minutes |
| 2 – 6 hours | Every 30 minutes |
| 6 – 24 hours | Every hour |
| 1 – 7 days | Every 6 hours |
| 7 – 30 days | Every 24 hours |
| 30+ days | Every 7 days |
How Vela learns from your post performance over time
After each post has had time to accumulate real data, Vela generates AI-powered recommendations based on how it actually performed. These insights feed directly into the next round of caption generation — so Vela gets smarter about your audience over time.
When recommendations are generated
| Window | When it triggers | What it analyses |
|---|---|---|
| 2-hour | ~110–135 minutes after posting | Early engagement signals — viral velocity, initial save rate, whether the post is gaining traction quickly. |
| 24-hour | ~23.8–25 hours after posting | Full first-day performance — reach, engagement rate, how the post compared to your account average. |
| 7-day | ~7 days after posting | Long-tail performance — total views, follower growth contribution, sustained engagement. |
Weekly competitor analysis to find the best hashtags for your niche
Every Monday at 6am, Vela scans competitor accounts in your niche and analyses which hashtags are driving the most engagement. This data is used every time a new caption is generated, so your hashtags are always based on what's actually working right now — not guesswork.
What gets tracked
| Data point | What it means |
|---|---|
| Average likes | Mean likes on posts that used this hashtag across competitor accounts. |
| Average engagement rate | Mean engagement rate on posts using this hashtag — a better signal than raw likes alone. |
| Competitor usage count | How many competitor posts used this hashtag. High count = proven niche relevance. |
What you can upload to Vela
Vela accepts the following file formats. Files not on the accepted list will be rejected at upload time.
Accepted
Not accepted
ffmpeg -i input.mov -vcodec h264 -acodec aac output.mp4
How Vela handles large video files automatically
Instagram's API and Vela's transcription service both have a 25MB file size limit for video. Rather than rejecting large files or requiring you to compress them manually, Vela automatically compresses any video over 25MB before processing it.
How it works
File size is checked
When Vela downloads your video during the prepare stage, it checks the file size. If it's under 25MB, no compression is needed and the video goes straight to transcription.
Compression runs automatically
If the file is over 25MB, Vela compresses it using H264 video encoding at a quality setting designed to bring the file well under 25MB while keeping it looking good on a phone screen.
Sizes are recorded
Both the original upload size and the final compressed size are saved on the post record. This lets you track how much compression occurred over time.
Processing continues normally
The compressed video is transcribed, captioned, and scheduled exactly like any other video. You don't need to do anything differently.
Automatic deletion of posted media files
When you upload a photo or video to Vela, the file is stored on Rensho's servers so it can be posted to Instagram at the right time. Once a post has been successfully published, that file is no longer needed — Vela will automatically delete it after a set number of days.
This keeps your storage footprint small, protects your media from sitting on a server indefinitely, and ensures the platform stays fast and cost-efficient as it grows.
How it works
Every night at midnight
Vela runs an automated cleanup job that checks all of your posted media files.
Finds files past their window
Any file from a successfully posted piece of content that is older than your deletion window setting is flagged for removal.
Deletes the file
The media file is permanently deleted from Rensho's servers. Your post record, caption, hashtags, and analytics are all kept — only the raw media file is removed.
Records the deletion
A timestamp is saved so you always know exactly when a file was cleaned up. This will be visible on the Analytics page in a future update.
Settings
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Deletion window | 7 days | How many days after a post is published before its media file is deleted. Adjust this in your Profile settings. |