The hard part of an IG carousel is not the drawing —
isknowing what is broken。
BearCarousel turns your text into aligned, machine-checked carousel slides. Not enough contrast, too many characters, outside the safe area —For a broken slide it tells you exactly what is broken and how to fix it。
Start with the basics (three ways to use it) ↓
Free · Apache-2.0 open source · runs entirely on your own machine · nothing uploaded · no sign-up
The built-in examples as actually rendered — not mockups
"Carousel layout and readability have right answers — nobody was willing to write them down."
Doing it by hand, still crooked at midnight
Centring is always slightly off, and one extra line blows the layout. You align every slide by hand, and by slide 8 it is a different design from slide 1.
AI-generated images with the text wrong
The image looks great, but strokes are missing from the characters and the brand colour drifts on every slide. Want to change one word on slide 6? You regenerate, and the whole slide comes back different.
You post it, nobody finishes it, and you do not know why
Three points crammed on one slide, contrast too low to read on a phone — the problems leave traces, but nobody tells you where they are.
Tools that draw pictures are everywhere.
What this one is about:It checks after it draws。
Give it text
Type it yourself, dig out your real cases with the slide-by-slide interview, or hand the topic to your own AI to draft. All three work.
Engine layout
Every element is centred on its actual rendered ink box — measured, not guessed. Set brand colour, font and logo once, and every slide matches.
Machine check
Contrast (WCAG), character count, safe area and real phone readability, checked slide by slide. Every problem comes with the measured value and how to fix it. A red light means it is not finished.
Three doors, take whichever suits. Same output, same checks.
Download directly
Download, double-click, and the browser opens itself. Windows and macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel).
Download the latest version freeGetting started ↓An unsigned free tool: on Windows press "More info → Run anyway"; on macOS right-click → Open. The source is fully public and you can check it yourself.
Hand it to your AI
Give the GitHub URL to an AI assistant like Claude Code and say what the topic is. It interviews you, drafts, renders, opens a live preview, and walks you through fixes until everything passes.
GitHub (with full AI documentation)Getting started ↓Claude Code users can install it as a plugin and then ask for a carousel in any project with one sentence.
One pip line
pip install bearcarousel. The CLI has draft / render / audit / export, all supporting --json, exit 1 on a red light, ready to wire into CI.
PyPIGetting started ↓Apache-2.0. The rule layer and the engine are both open source.
Three ways in, three minutes each
Download the app (no terminal)
Download, double-click, and the browser opens itself
Windows shows "unknown publisher" the first time — press "More info → Run anyway"; on macOS, right-click the file → Open. After that you never touch a terminal again.
Pick framework, slide count and size
The framework decides the order of the story (use the default AIDA walkthrough if you are unsure). Changing the slide count does not lop off the end — the narrative is rebuilt. Three sizes: 4:5 for posts, 9:16 for stories, and square.
Answer four foundation questions first, so the content is not hollow
Who you want to move, what hurts them most, what you actually have (a case, a number, a customer's own words), and which action you want from the reader. You can still make one without an answer to the third, but the tool will tell you honestly: this will come out generic.
Give it content — pick one of three ways
Type it yourself (the counter changes colour live when you go over); or paste the topic into your own ChatGPT or Claude (press "copy the drafting prompt", paste it there, and bring the result back); or turn on "slide-by-slide interview" and let the tool ask you for real cases and numbers one slide at a time.
Run the checks, fix what it says, export
Every slide is checked for alignment, contrast, character count and readability. A red light comes with the measured number and the fix — just follow it. Slides written too vaguely are stopped by the strength gate, which hands you the questions to push on. Once everything is green, export a ZIP with images named in posting order, ready to drag into Instagram.
With your AI assistant (Claude Code and friends)
Give it the URL
Paste github.com/johnnyang0612/bearcarousel to your AI assistant and say what the carousel is about — the tool ships full AI documentation (AGENTS.md) and the assistant reads it itself. Claude Code users can install it as a plugin and then ask for a carousel in any project with one sentence.
Answer its interview
It asks four foundation questions first (audience, pain, a real case, the goal), then goes deeper slide by slide. Answer in plain speech — if an answer is too vague it pushes back and asks for something specific, rather than covering for you with waffle.
See the preview and edit the text directly
It opens a browser preview by itself, and it is live in both directions: it sees you editing text on the page, and when it fixes a red light your screen updates within seconds. You are both editing the same draft.
Check it, export it
Once the checks are green and the weak points are handled, it hands you the ZIP — and tells you plainly which slides are generic and which prompts you accepted. It will not call "no red lights" perfect.
Engineers (pip / CLI)
pip install bearcarousel
Then bearcarousel ui opens the browser interface. The first run downloads the matching program tree (rule pack, templates, fonts) into ~/.bearcarousel/, and it works offline after that.
Four CLI verbs
draft --slides N for the grid → fill in the text → render the images → audit --json to check. Exit 1 on a red light, clean machine-readable output on stdout, ready for CI.
Strength gate and delivery gate
audit reports weak points (a weak hook, a filler subhead, missing keywords) along with the questions to push on. export refuses to produce a zip while a red light or an unresolved weakness stands; --override "reason" forces it through but leaves a trace in the deliverable.
Every judgement lives in the rule pack
Every editing and design rule lives in rules/base/*.json — versioned, open source, with the evidence and confidence level behind each recommendation. Changing a judgement means shipping a new rule pack, not changing the program.
Because we use it every day ourselves,
and becauseOpen source is what earns the right to say "check it yourself"。
BearCarousel is a content tool Brightstream built for itself. The whole rule set — what counts as broken and why — lives in a versioned open-source rule pack, right down to the evidence and confidence level behind each recommendation. It costs nothing, needs no sign-up, and your content never leaves your machine. If you like it, come and tell us in the community what you made with it. That is the best return we could ask for.
Community is free · no pitch · Johnny Yang and the tool's author are both in there
Your next carousel:
let the machine tell youwhat is broken。
Apache-2.0 open source · built by Brightstream Technology · nothing uploaded