Adding creators and their accounts, choosing tracking modes, working with notes and the change log, and monitoring goal compliance.
A creator can have accounts on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. See Creators & Accounts for the model. In your project, go to Creators → Add creator and add one or more accounts by:
https://www.tiktok.com/@username, https://www.instagram.com/username/, https://www.youtube.com/@handle)@username or just usernametrackagoat dispatches an initial update per account when a creator is added. The first stats snapshot typically appears within 1–2 minutes.
Creators are scoped to a project. The same account can be tracked in multiple projects within the same org.
A creator's header shows a primary handle: the handle of their primary account (their TikTok account if they have one, otherwise the earliest-added account). This is also the top-level handle returned for a creator in the API.
Every creator page defaults to the creator's combined performance across all their accounts. An account switcher in the header lets you filter any tab down to a single account or platform, so you can drill into just their TikTok, compare TikTok against Instagram, and so on. See Creators & Accounts for the full model.
Each account has a tracking mode that determines how newly discovered videos from that account enter the system. There are three modes.
| Mode | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Auto | All newly discovered videos are automatically added with status auto_tracked and included in stats. |
| Selective | Newly discovered videos enter the Tracking Inbox with status pending_review. A team member must approve or exclude each video. |
| Hashtag | Videos whose caption contains one of your tracked hashtags are auto-tracked. Everything else goes to the Inbox or is excluded. Your choice. |
Change an account's tracking mode from Creator detail → Settings tab: each account is configured independently.
Use Selective mode when you want to curate which of an account's videos count toward your program: for example, if a creator posts off-topic content you don't want in your campaign stats.
Hashtag mode automates that curation. Define a list of hashtags, and any newly discovered video whose caption includes one of them is tracked automatically: no manual review.
This fits the common case where a creator posts both sponsored and personal content, and only posts carrying your campaign tag should count.
Configuring it:
# is optional and case doesn't matter: #Summer2026, Summer2026, and summer2026 are all stored the same way.pending_review, so you can still pull one in manually.excluded immediately. They're still recorded and visible under Show excluded in the Inbox, but never counted in stats.Hashtags are cleaned before they're saved. A tag is stored lowercase, Unicode-normalized, with the leading # removed and any character that can't appear in a hashtag stripped out. So #Black-Friday is saved as blackfriday, which is how that campaign is actually tagged.
Whitespace and commas separate one tag from the next, so "#ad, black-friday" gives you two tags: ad and blackfriday.
The same cleaning is applied when reading a video's caption, so the two always line up: a caption written #Black-Friday also reduces to blackfriday and matches.
The chips shown after you save are exactly what is stored. If one looks different from what you typed, that's why, and you can remove it and try again.
Normalization runs in the database, so it applies no matter how the account is edited: the app, the API, or a direct integration.
How matching works:
ad matches #ad but not the word "already" and not #advertisement.Instagram creators often put hashtags in the first comment rather than the caption. trackagoat only reads the caption, so those posts will not match. If a creator does this, use Selective mode for that account instead.
Some videos arrive with no caption. This happens on any platform, most often when TikTok scraping falls back to its secondary path, which returns no captions. Whatever the cause, a video with no caption always goes to the Tracking Inbox, even when Send non-matching to Inbox is off, so a scraping gap never quietly drops a post.
Two things hashtag mode does not do:
| Tab | What you see |
|---|---|
| Overview | Follower count chart, total likes trend, posting frequency, and recent top videos: combined across the creator's accounts, or scoped to one via the account switcher. |
| Videos | All tracked videos for this creator across every account, each showing its platform, tracking status, and current stats. |
| Creator Goals | Per-creator performance goals and compliance status. See Creator Goals. |
| Change log | Automatic events: follower milestones, tracking mode changes, goal compliance changes, creator added / re-activated / auto-disabled. |
| Settings | Tracking mode, display name override, tracking start date, and danger zone (remove from project). |
Every creator has a notes field: a free-form markdown editor for your team's context. Use it for:
Notes are readable via the API as the readme field on creator objects.
AI agents read the readme field before analyzing a creator. If you're using trackagoat with an AI tool, write clear notes: they directly shape the quality of agent analysis.
Each account has a tracking start date that sets the lower bound for that account's stats history displayed in charts. If you added a creator mid-program, set this date to the program start so charts aren't misleading. Configurable per account in Creator → Settings.
If an account fails 5 consecutive profile updates: usually because the handle was deleted, renamed, or made private: trackagoat automatically auto-disables it. An auto-disabled account stops being updated so quota isn't wasted on a handle that may be gone, and is shown with an Auto-Disabled badge.
You can review auto-disabled creators on the Auto-Disabled Creators page (reachable from the creators list filter) or via the Tracking Gaps / Update Failures watchlists on Program Health.
To bring a creator back, an org admin clicks Re-enable. Re-enabling resets the failure counter and resumes updates. A 24-hour cooldown applies per creator: if a creator was re-enabled within the last 24 hours, you'll need to wait before re-enabling again. You can re-enable creators individually or in bulk.
If the handle changed, update it before re-enabling: otherwise the creator will simply fail again and be auto-disabled.
Soft delete
In Creator → Settings → Danger zone, you can remove a creator from a project. This is a soft delete: stats history is preserved and the creator can be re-added. It does not count against your org's creator limit once removed.