Field notes
Playbooks, teardowns and the occasional argument — everything we have learned helping creators grow across every major platform.
Bluesky is the one platform that will simply tell you what is on a post. You get every image, the alt text, and the file exactly as it was uploaded.
Threads answers a signed-out request honestly, which makes it one of the easier platforms to get a picture out of. Two details are worth knowing first.
Two different links, two different routes. A post gives you what its link card publishes; a Page gives you its picture at the size Facebook stores.
Instagram publishes a larger copy of every public post's picture so link cards can render it. Here is how to reach it, and why the link stops working.
X keeps one file per photo and serves it at six named sizes. The timeline shows you a middling one; the largest is a single word away in the URL.
Every platform publishes a larger copy of a post's picture than the one the feed renders. Here is where each one keeps it, and where the trail goes cold.
The same link renders two different cards. Facebook gives a title 88 characters on desktop and about 65 on a phone — and the phone is where most of the taps are.
Pinterest serves every Pin at four fixed widths and keeps the original under a path the interface never links to. Here is how to get the file as uploaded.
Copying hashtags out of a screenshot by hand is how most people do this. Here is how to pull them off a public post from its URL, and what the limits are.
Comment-as-hook is a format now. Here is how to draw a TikTok comment card that reads as real, including the Creator chip almost every generator gets wrong.
Draw an Instagram post card with the caption cut exactly where the feed cuts it, so you can see which sentence disappears behind "more" before you publish.
Draw a Facebook post card for a slide or a client mock-up, in desktop or mobile width, without screenshotting a real feed and cropping four things out of it.