What's new since trackagoat 2.0

A lot has changed since 2.0 added Instagram in July. Most of it is about counting every post correctly, and making payouts match what creators actually earned. This post covers what changed and why it matters. Every fix is in the changelog.

In short

• Tracking is more accurate. Instagram accounts now update, photo carousels refresh like videos, and every page counts views the same way.
• Creator Goals are judged on full periods. A goal that starts mid-week is first judged the following week.
• CPM pays on views gained. A video keeps earning in later periods, for as long as you choose.
• You can pay creators through Dots from the Payouts tracker, and the payment is recorded for you.
• Comment Insights replaces Sentiment Radar. It shows the comments you'd act on, like people asking what the app is.
• The MCP server can do what the API does, and the Free plan now includes API and MCP access.
• The app has a new look, and you can drag the sidebar sections into your own order.
• Prices changed. Starter is $29 a month and Ultra is $399. Each plan has a real limit on tracked videos: 10, 100 or 3,000.

Every post counted, with the right numbers

A missing post or a wrong view count is the worst thing a tracking tool can get wrong, so most of the work went here.

Instagram accounts now update. Until September 30, Instagram accounts could be added but were never filled in: no followers, no posts, and Refresh failed. Instagram tracking wasn't running. It is now, and every Instagram account you'd already added was picked up without re-adding it. Views on Reels are plays. Instagram doesn't publish a view count for photo posts and carousels, so those show likes and comments with 0 views. See Instagram tracking.

TikTok posts are found more reliably. Each check now reads the account's full post list, with captions, post dates and photo carousels, for far more accounts per run. Before, a slow or blocked page often fell back to a source with no captions, so Hashtag tracking could miss posts. An account whose check fails is now retried within about 2 hours instead of waiting for the next run.

Photo carousels update like videos. Many TikTok carousels went weeks without a stats update. They're now checked every 12 hours while new, then on the same age-based schedule as videos, and monthly once they're over 90 days old. The full schedule is in How scraping works.

Fewer wrong numbers get saved. A stats read that came back for a different post, a rounded count like "1.2M", or a missing count recorded as 0 is no longer saved. Save counts also no longer drop to zero after a refresh that didn't return them.

Freshness badges follow each post's own schedule. The Fresh, Turning Stale and Stale badges now use the real update schedule for that post. This way an older carousel or Instagram post isn't called stale on a schedule it was never on.

A handle change no longer splits a creator's history. Before, when a creator renamed their account, the old handle stopped updating and the new one started with no history. Now the account follows its permanent platform ID and gets renamed, keeping its posts, goals and payouts. If you'd already added the new handle as a separate account, both are flagged and our team merges them after review. See When a creator changes their handle.

Private accounts are flagged everywhere. When an account goes private we can't see its new posts, but its profile keeps updating, so nothing used to look wrong. Private accounts now get a Private badge, an alert on Program Health and a notification to org admins. You get another notification when the account is public again. See Private accounts.

Every page shows the same numbers. The dashboard, Insights, Program Health, campaign and creator pages, the API and the MCP server now count views the same way. A post counts once it's accepted and tracked, and its creator and account are active. Posts waiting in the Tracking Inbox show as "+N awaiting review" instead of being counted.

Some numbers were also just wrong. For one creator, a 30-day Views Gained chart showed about 6.5 million views when the real number was about 5,100. On a program of about 100 creators, the dashboard's views card showed well under half the real total. Both are fixed, so expect some of your numbers to change. How metrics are calculated has the definitions.

Adding accounts is easier. Paste a TikTok or Instagram handle or any profile link, including TikTok share links and Instagram links copied from the app. Accounts can be added on their own and attached to a creator later, and a creator can start with just a name. The new Hashtag tracking mode tracks only posts that use your hashtags, and by default sends the rest to the Tracking Inbox. Posts made on an account's tracking end date now count too. See Creators and accounts.

Campaigns and Creator Goals

Goals are judged on full periods. A goal that starts or ends partway through a week or month is now judged, and paid, only for the full periods inside its dates. Say a weekly goal starts on a Sunday. Its first judged week is the next Monday to Sunday, and the partial week before it never shows Missed. Goal forms, a creator's Goals tab and share pages say which weeks or months each goal is judged in. See Which periods count.

Goal status is fairer early in a period. Pace isn't judged for the first 15% of a period, so nobody is At Risk minutes after a week starts. A posts goal only reads behind once a whole post is due, and summaries show Behind Pace and At Risk separately. Followers goals measure growth per account, so adding an account mid-period doesn't count its existing followers as growth.

Campaign totals count each video once. A video that's in a campaign twice only counts once, and Campaign Insights counts a video shared by two campaigns once. You can also filter Insights, Program Health and the Payouts tracker by campaign, and the filter includes nested campaigns and videos you added directly. See Campaigns.

Payouts

CPM pays for the views gained since a creator was last paid. Before, CPM only paid for videos posted in the period, and stopped counting a video once that period was paid. A video that took off a week later earned nothing more. Now it keeps earning.

Say you pay $0.50 per 1,000 views each week. A video posted on Saturday has 20,000 views when the week closes, so that week pays $10. It reaches 500,000 views the next week, so the next week pays $240 for the 480,000 new views. The new Count views for setting decides how long after posting a video keeps earning: Forever (the default), 7, 30, 60 or 90 days, or a custom number. Unpaid views from before the change on October 9 weren't back-paid. See Setting up a CPM payout.

Pay creators through Dots. Org admins can connect their Dots account under Org settings, Payment providers. Then you can pay a creator's earned payouts from the Payouts tracker or the creator's Payouts tab. The money goes through Dots and the payment is recorded in the same step, so nobody has to type it in. If a Dots payout fails or is canceled, it's voided so you can pay it again. Agents can send Dots payouts too, but only after an org admin turns on Agent payments, with optional limits per payout and per 24 hours. Paying by Venmo, PayPal or bank transfer still works the same way with Mark as Paid. See Paying creators with Dots.

Every row in the tracker adds up. A new Adjustments column sits between Paid and Outstanding. It's the part of a payment that didn't settle an accrual, like a tip or an over-payment. Each row now reads Earned, minus Paid, plus Adjustments, equals Outstanding. See Creator-grouped table.

Supplemental amounts. Sometimes a creator is owed more for a period you already paid, for example because posts from that week were found later. An org admin can now add a supplemental amount for the difference. The original payment doesn't change, and the extra shows as owed until you mark it paid. See Supplemental amounts.

Private accounts hold goal and CPM payouts. If one of a creator's accounts is private, we can't see what it posted. Their goal and CPM payouts for that period are now held instead of being paid on the posts we already had. A held payout is paid once the account is public again, or an org admin can choose Pay anyway, which is recorded in the payout history. See Recording payments.

Removed creators are hidden in the tracker. Creators you removed from a project no longer show in the Payouts tracker or count in its outstanding total. If any of them still has unpaid earnings, a note says how many and how much, and Show removed creators lists them. See Filtering and date ranges.

Smaller changes that still matter:

• Mark as Paid is one screen instead of six steps.
• When you assign a payout structure, you pick which period it starts earning on.
• If a post is found after a period closes, unpaid amounts are recalculated. Payments you've already recorded stay the same.
• The Payouts page names any creator with no payout structure, and the tracker lists assigned creators before their first earning.
• Removing a video now keeps it as excluded instead of deleting it. Before, the next check found it again and it could be paid a second time.
• Send conversions like sign-ups or purchases from your own system through the API, and pay creators per conversion. See Conversions.
• Give a creator a PIN-protected page where they can see their own numbers and what they've earned. See Shareable creator pages.

Insights

Insights moved up. It's now right under Dashboard in the sidebar, above Tracking.

Filter by campaign and platform. Campaign, Account and Video Insights have a Campaign filter that scopes every widget to one campaign. Campaign Insights also has five trend charts for program reviews, starting with Impressions Over Time and Posts Over Time. Picking TikTok or Instagram now filters everything it should. Before, it did nothing on Campaign Insights, and Content Calendar only filtered the pop-up for a single day. See Insights controls.

Comment Insights replaces Sentiment Radar. It's under Insights and shows the most-liked comments first. It tags the ones you'd act on: people asking what the app is, people signing up, people asking if a post is an ad, words like scam, and mentions of your brand or a competitor. A creators table shows comments per 1,000 views and each creator's top comment.

Sentiment is now scored by a model that agreed with people about 3 times in 4 on hand-labeled comments, against about 1 in 2 before. The radar and the average score are gone, because most negative comments turned out to be viewers talking about their own lives. Comment Insights is on paid plans, and Free plans no longer collect comments. See Comment Insights.

The API and the MCP server

A hosted MCP server. Connect Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or another agent to https://www.trackagoat.com/api/mcp. In Claude.ai or Claude Desktop, add it as a custom connector and sign in, with no API key to copy.

It can do what the API does. The MCP server went from 21 tools to over 100. An agent can now edit creators and videos, review the Tracking Inbox, manage campaigns and goals, run analytics reports, and set up and record payouts. Tools that delete or void are marked, so your agent's client can ask you first. Org setup (members, invitations, projects and API keys) stays in the app. See MCP server.

API and MCP access on Free. The Free plan includes 200 requests a day and 1 API key, so you can connect an agent before you upgrade. Each MCP tool call counts as one request. See Plans and limits.

Set up with a coding agent. The home page and the docs have a prompt you can paste into Claude Code, Codex or another coding agent. Your agent walks you through signing up and adds the MCP server. You do the sign-ins yourself. See Set up with a coding agent.

Ask your agent what's new. The get_changelog tool answers questions like "when did the payouts tracker change?", and the same entries are at GET /api/v2/changelog with no API key. See Changelog API.

Comment Insights, Program Health, the payouts tracker, supplemental amounts and Dots payouts are all in the API and MCP too. Every error now has a code, and an unknown parameter is rejected instead of quietly ignored.

A new look, and fewer surprises

The app now uses the same warm paper and night colors as the website. Creator, video, campaign and account pages share one layout, and so do the tracking lists and the settings pages. The Usage page shows a bar for each plan limit that turns amber at 80%. Click a creator's or account's profile picture to see it larger.

You can drag the sidebar sections into your own order. Hover a section name and drag its grip, or focus the grip and use the arrow keys. The order is saved to your account, so it's the same on every device.

You should get sent back to the sign-in page much less often. Pages that load a lot at once, like Creator Goals, could sign you out by mistake while your session refreshed. Sign-ins are also checked without a database call now, so a busy moment on our side doesn't sign anyone out.

When a page or widget can't load, it now says so and shows a Retry button. Before, a failed load could look like a real answer, like "$0.00" in payouts or a Healthy pulse on Program Health.

New prices and tracked-video limits

Starter went from $20 to $29 a month, and Ultra from $200 to $399. Free is still $0. Running the service costs more than we first planned for, and the other plan limits didn't change. There's still no checkout: start on Free, then email us the plan you want. See Pricing.

Each plan now has a real limit on tracked videos: 10 on Free, 100 on Starter and 3,000 on Ultra. Before, it only applied to videos added by link. Now it covers every video, including posts found on your accounts.

New posts are always tracked. When you go over the limit, your oldest videos stop updating first. A paused video keeps its last stats and still counts as posted for goals and payouts. Its views stop growing, though, so CPM stops counting new views on it. Keep tracking resumes a video and pauses your oldest other one instead. Orgs that were already over the limit on October 9 have 14 days before anything is paused, and so does any org after a downgrade. See Tracked videos.

Each plan's minimum update interval is now enforced too, so the Free plan checks for new posts once a day.

A new website and docs

The website was rebuilt, with a page for each part of the product, like Tracking and Payouts. The Pricing page reads its limits from the same settings the app enforces. The status page shows when updates pause because our data provider's monthly quota is used up, and the app shows a banner saying when they'll resume. The changelog is public too.

The docs have a new layout with four tabs: Guides, API reference, AI agents and Changelog. Search covers page text, not just titles. Add .md to any docs URL to get that page as Markdown, or point your agent at llms.txt.

If something doesn't look right, email support@trackagoat.com.