MichaelVessia/tubearchivist

TubeArchivist

Manage my self-hosted TubeArchivist instance: subscribe to YouTube channels, inspect what's indexed, watch the download queue, and check Celery worker state. Lives at http://192.168.1.56:8000 (LXC 120). Storage is on the NAS under /mnt/synology-media/youtube, bind-mounted as /mnt/media/youtube in the LXC and exposed as /youtube to the TubeArchivist app.

Environment

Credentials are exported into the shell by sops-nix (see modules/programs/shell.nix):

• TUBEARCHIVIST_URL — base URL (no trailing slash)
• TUBEARCHIVIST_USERNAME — admin username
• TUBEARCHIVIST_PASSWORD — admin password

The tubearchivist CLI reports a JSON error envelope when they are missing.

Auth model

TubeArchivist uses Django session auth, not JWT or API keys.

1. POST /api/user/login/ with {"username": "...", "password": "..."} — server responds HTTP 204 and sets sessionid + csrftoken cookies.
2. Subsequent GET calls need only the cookies (-b jar).
3. Mutating calls (POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE) additionally need:
   • X-CSRFToken: <csrftoken cookie value>
   • Referer: <TUBEARCHIVIST_URL>/

The CLI handles login, cookies, and CSRF headers for supported commands.

CLI

Use the installed tubearchivist CLI for common operations. It always emits a single JSON envelope with ok, command, result or error, and next_actions. scripts/tubearchivist.sh remains as a compatibility shim for older workflows.

tubearchivist status                                       # health + config + stats
tubearchivist channels --limit 50                          # subscribed channels
tubearchivist channel-info <channel_id>                    # one channel detail
tubearchivist subscribe "<url-or-id>"                      # queues Celery resolution
tubearchivist unsubscribe <channel_id> --confirm-unsubscribe
tubearchivist videos --limit 25                            # recent indexed videos
tubearchivist video-info <youtube_id>                      # one video detail
tubearchivist downloads --limit 25                         # pending queue
tubearchivist playlists --limit 25                         # indexed playlists
tubearchivist tasks --limit 25                             # Celery task history
tubearchivist search <query> --limit 25                    # cross-index search

For anything not covered, call the API directly after logging in — see references/api-endpoints.md and references/quick-reference.md.

Workflow: subscribing to a channel

1. Ask the user for either the YouTube channel URL (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/@ExampleChannel) or the channel ID (UC...).
2. tubearchivist subscribe "<arg>" — this queues a Celery subscribe_to task. TA does the resolution.
3. The channel will not appear in channels immediately. Celery typically takes 30-60 seconds. Poll tasks to confirm the subscribe_to task went SUCCESS before reporting back to the user.
4. If the task fails (most often a yt-dlp 404 on the handle), surface the error message to the user — they probably typed the handle wrong.

Workflow: routine status checks

Use status for a one-shot overview (health, version, totals). Drop to tasks to see what Celery is up to. downloads lists items the worker has queued for yt-dlp.

Storage layout

TubeArchivist writes downloaded videos to /youtube inside the LXC, which is a symlink to /mnt/media/youtube (the NAS bind mount). On the host that's /mnt/synology-media/youtube. One folder per channel:

/mnt/synology-media/youtube/<Channel Name>/...
/mnt/synology-media/youtube/<Another Channel>/...

Mutations: confirm first

Always confirm with the user before:

• tubearchivist unsubscribe <channel_id> --confirm-unsubscribe — drops the channel and stops future syncs.
• Any custom DELETE against /api/video/, /api/channel/, or /api/playlist/ — these remove indexed data.
• Bulk operations against /api/appsettings/* (snapshots, backups, rescan-filesystem).

References

• references/api-endpoints.md — endpoint reference and the full schema fetch (/api/schema/)
• references/quick-reference.md — copy-paste curl recipes (login + jar, list channels, subscribe with CSRF, view tasks, queue)
• references/troubleshooting.md — auth, CSRF, yt-dlp resolution, and connection error fixes

Notes

• API base is /api/ (no v1/v2 prefix). The schema is /api/schema/ (OpenAPI 3 YAML), human docs at /api/docs/.
• Health probe: GET /api/health/ returns "OK" (handled by nginx in front of the Django app).
• Subscribing queues a Celery task — the channel does not appear in the channel list until that task completes (30-60s typical).
• TubeArchivist lives on the LAN. If TUBEARCHIVIST_URL is unreachable, surface that to the user rather than guessing.