GuideAI Captions

AI Captions

Octopost uses AI to generate platform-optimized captions and hashtags for your content.

AI caption generation walkthrough

Video coming soon

How it works

When you click "Generate Caption & Hashtags" on the Compose page, Octopost sends your content context to an AI model that writes a caption tailored to each platform you've selected. The AI considers platform norms (TikTok is casual and punchy, LinkedIn is professional, YouTube descriptions can be longer), your brand voice, and any context you've provided.

Providing good context

The quality of AI output depends entirely on the context you provide. The AI Context panel on the Compose page has three fields that feed the model:

High impact — Description

The "What's this about?" field is the single strongest signal. Even a brief sentence transforms output from generic to specific. Example: "5-minute pasta recipe, super easy, weeknight dinner" gives the AI everything it needs.

Medium impact — Title

A descriptive title like "Morning routine vlog" helps. A filename like "VID_20240315_001.mp4" doesn't — the AI ignores auto-detected filenames.

Auto — Video transcription

When enabled on a Tentacle, Octopost transcribes your video's audio and feeds the transcript to the AI. This is the best context for spoken content — the AI knows exactly what's said.

The AI confidence indicator on the Compose page shows you the context quality in real-time: red (low), yellow (medium), or green (high).

Directed regeneration

After generating, you can steer the AI in a new direction without starting from scratch. Quick-action chips appear below the generate button:

ShorterFunnierProfessionalBoldQuestion hook

Each chip tells the AI to rewrite the caption with a specific angle while keeping your content context. You can click them as many times as you want.

Brand voice

Each Tentacle can have a brand prompt — a custom instruction that shapes the AI's tone and style for that brand. For example: "Write like a Gen Z content creator. Keep it under 100 words. Always include 3 relevant emojis." When you queue content to a Tentacle, its brand prompt automatically feeds into AI generation.

Set brand prompts on the Tentacles page.

Per-channel prompts

Beyond brand-level prompts, each connected account can have its own channel prompt. This lets you fine-tune output per platform — your LinkedIn account might say "professional, no emojis" while your TikTok says "casual, trending slang." Set these on the Connected Accounts page.

Brand prompt + channel prompt + content description = the best AI output. The three layers work together: brand sets the overall voice, channel adapts for the platform, and description provides the specific content context.

Auto AI Captions (Tentacles)

When "Auto AI Captions" is enabled on a Tentacle, any content added to its queue without a caption will automatically have one generated before posting. This is great for high-volume workflows where you just want to drop media into a queue and let Octopost handle the rest.

AI-generated captions are suggestions — always review before posting, especially for brand accounts. The AI can occasionally misread tone or context.