How to Set Instagram Ice Breakers via API

What ice breakers are

Ice breakers are up to 4 predefined questions Instagram shows a user who opens a new DM thread with your business — before they type anything. The user taps one, you get the tap with a payload you chose, and the conversation starts on your terms.

Three properties make them worth setting up:

• You pick the questions. “Track my order”, “What are your hours?”, “Talk to a human” — the first message routes itself.
• A tap opens the 24-hour messaging window, so you can reply free-form immediately.
• They unlock ig.me referral tracking. Meta only sends ig.me link referrals for profiles with at least one ice breaker set — without them, your campaign ref parameters go nowhere.

They work on Instagram professional accounts with DMs enabled only.

Set ice breakers

curl -X POST "https://api.postproxy.dev/api/profiles/PROFILE_ID/ice_breakers" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "ice_breakers": [
      { "question": "Track my order", "payload": "TRACK_ORDER" },
      { "question": "What are your hours?", "payload": "HOURS" },
      { "question": "Talk to a human", "payload": "HUMAN" }
    ]
  }'

Each item needs a question (what the user sees, 1–4 items total) and a payload (what you get back when it’s tapped). A POST replaces the existing set — there is no partial update. The response is { "success": true }.

To inspect the current set, GET /api/profiles/PROFILE_ID/ice_breakers; to remove them entirely, DELETE the same path.

Receive taps

When a user taps an ice breaker, Meta sends a postback — not a regular message. Postproxy normalizes it into an inbound message in the chat:

• body is the tapped question (e.g. "Track my order"),
• your payload rides along at platform_data.postback.payload,
• a message.received webhook fires,
• the 24-hour messaging window opens.

So an ice-breaker tap looks exactly like any other inbound DM to your handler, with one extra field telling you which button it was.

Route by payload

A minimal handler that answers each ice breaker differently:

app.post("/webhooks/postproxy", async (req, res) => {
  res.sendStatus(200); // ack fast, work after

  const event = req.body;
  if (event.type !== "message.received") return;

  const msg = event.data.object;
  const payload = msg.platform_data?.postback?.payload;
  if (!payload) return; // a typed message, not an ice-breaker tap

  const replies = {
    TRACK_ORDER: "Send me your order number and I'll look it up.",
    HOURS: "We're open Mon-Fri 9:00-18:00 CET.",
    HUMAN: "Connecting you with the team — expect a reply within the hour.",
  };

  await fetch(`https://api.postproxy.dev/api/chats/${msg.chat_id}/messages`, {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.POSTPROXY_API_KEY}`,
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({ body: replies[payload] ?? replies.HUMAN }),
  });
});

The reply is a normal send through the Direct Messages API — the tap opened the 24-hour window, so no special handling is needed. From here the thread continues like any conversation: see How to Send Instagram DMs via API.

Rules and limits, in one place

Full endpoint details: Ice breakers in the Direct Messages reference. To know which campaign brought the user into the thread in the first place, pair ice breakers with ig.me link referrals.