unshackle/docs/reference/configuration/post-scripts.md

Post-download scripts

Run your own script when a download finishes, with unshackle's metadata passed in as {variable} placeholders. Use it to hand a finished file to an uploader, send a notification, or start a library scan.

post_scripts

• Type: list[dict]  ·  Default: [] (no scripts run)

post_scripts:
  - command: "python /opt/upload.py {filepath} --service={service} --season={season} --episode={episode} --tmdb={tmdb} --subs={sidecars}"
    event: success # success | failure
    mode: file # file | season | run
  - command: "python /opt/notify.py --title={title} --episode={episode}"

Every entry that matches the event and mode runs, so one download can feed an uploader and a notifier without a wrapper script. An entry may also be written as a plain string, which is the same as {command: "...", event: success, mode: file}.

Key	Default	Meaning
command	required	The command to run, with {variable} placeholders
event	success	success when a file was written, failure when the download failed
mode	file	file, season, or run. See Modes

An entry whose event or mode is not one of the listed values is skipped and logs a warning naming the bad value, once per command. An entry whose command cannot be split into arguments, such as one with an unbalanced quote, is skipped with a warning too. Neither stops the download or the other entries.

How the command runs

The command is split into arguments first, and variables are substituted into those arguments afterwards. The process runs without a shell.

This is what keeps a title like Bob"; rm -rf ~ harmless: a value can never turn into an extra argument or a shell operator, and you never have to think about quoting. It also means a path containing spaces always arrives as a single argument on every OS.

!!! warning "Prefix your variables" Titles, episode names and IDs come from the streaming service, not from you. Tokenizing first stops a value becoming a new argument, but a value on its own can still be a whole argument. A bare {title} whose value is --upload-file=/etc/passwd would arrive as an option to your script, not as text. Write --title={title}, not a bare {title}, so a service can never forge a flag. unshackle refuses to run a command when a substituted value would become an option-like token (one that starts with -), and logs a warning instead.

!!! warning "No shell features, and name your interpreter" Pipes, &&, > redirection, ~ and globs do not work, because no shell is involved. If you want them, make the shell explicit: bash -c "...".

For the same reason there is no interpreter lookup. Write `python /opt/upload.py`
rather than `/opt/upload.py`. unshackle will not guess whether you meant the system
Python or the one in its own virtual environment.

On Windows, when a **fixed** part of an argument contains a space, quote the whole
argument (`"--out=C:\My Dir\{filename}"`), not just the value. Substituted values
never need quoting on any OS.

On Windows, do not target a `.bat` or `.cmd` file directly. Windows runs batch files
through `cmd.exe`, whose argument quoting differs from every other program and has a
history of letting a crafted value break out (CVE-2024-3566). Call the interpreter and
pass the script as an argument (`python upload.py`, `pwsh -File upload.ps1`) instead.

Scripts are fire and forget. unshackle starts the process, writes the command to the debug log, and carries on. It does not wait for the script, capture its output, time it out, or change its own exit code when a script fails. A script keeps running if unshackle exits first, and Ctrl+C during a season pack does not kill the scripts already started.

!!! note "One process per file" In file mode a large season pack starts one process per episode with nothing throttling them. If your script is heavy, queue the work inside it or use mode: season.

Variables

Metadata comes from the same naming context that produced the file's name, built per output file. So {quality} and {hdr} always describe the file being passed. Downloading -q 1080,2160 -r HDR10,SDR produces four files, each with its own invocation and its own values.

Variable	Value
{filepath}	Absolute path of the output file
{filename}	Its filename, with extension
{folder}	Absolute path of its parent folder
{ext}	Its extension, including the dot
{sidecars}	Sidecar subtitle files written for this output, newline separated
{title}	Show, movie or track name, sanitized
{title_raw}	Exactly what the service returned, untouched
{title_id}	The service's ID for the title
{service}	Service tag
{year} {season} {episode} {episode_name}	Season and episode are plain numbers (1, 5)
{quality} {resolution} {hdr} {hfr} {vcodec} {acodec} {edition} {tag} {lang_tag}	As in the filename template, for this file
{tmdb} {imdb} {tvdb}	The tagging IDs in use, otherwise empty. See Tagging IDs
{error}	Failure message. Empty on success

Every variable from your output_template is available here as well, including {video} and {audio}, of which {vcodec} and {acodec} are aliases.

!!! warning "Empty variables become an empty string" --tmdb={tmdb} with no ID resolved hands your script --tmdb=, so treat an empty string as absent. Write your script to handle every variable being empty.

Empty is common, and not only when data is missing:

- Nothing was resolved. `{tmdb}` is empty when no metadata provider found the title,
  the matching API key is missing, or the title is a movie you gave no ID for.
- The title has no such field. Movies have no `{season}` or `{episode}`, and music has
  neither.
- **The naming context renders it empty on purpose.** `{hdr}` is empty for an SDR
  file, because SDR is the absence of an HDR tag in a filename rather than a tag that
  reads `SDR`. `{edition}`, `{atmos}`, `{multi}`, `{dual}` and `{hfr}` behave the same
  way. If your script needs the word `SDR`, derive it from an empty `{hdr}` yourself.
- The hook is a `failure` hook. A failed download has no output file to read metadata
  from, so everything that comes from the naming context is empty. See
  [Events](#events).

There is no `{variable?}` conditional here, unlike `output_template`. The token is
always passed, so the argument list your script receives keeps the same shape on every
run and your argument parser does not have to cope with a flag appearing and
disappearing.

Season and episode are the plain numbers, not the `S01E05` form used in filenames. The
padding and the separator belong to the filename template rather than to the data.

Music variables

A music download builds its variables from the music naming context, so a hook gets the release fields instead of the season and episode ones. {season}, {episode} and {episode_name} are always empty for music.

Variable	Value
{artist}	Track artist
{album_artist}	Album artist, falling back to the track artist
{album}	Album name
{track_number} {disc}	Zero padded. {disc} is empty on a single-disc release
{track_total} {disc_total}	Zero padded totals, empty when the service did not give them
{isrc} {upc} {label} {genre} {release_type} {explicit}	As the service reported them, empty when absent

In a file hook {title} is the track name. See Modes for what an album hook puts in {title}.

Tagging IDs

{tmdb}, {imdb} and {tvdb} carry the IDs unshackle is tagging the file with, read at the moment the hook is dispatched rather than snapshotted at the start of the run. An episode's TMDB ID is resolved by the title search inside the download loop, so a hook fires with it already filled in.

They hold an ID you passed with --tmdb, --imdb or --tvdb, plus a TMDB ID the episode search resolved. No such search runs for a movie, so a movie hook gets them empty unless you passed one.

Sidecar files

{sidecars} holds the sidecar subtitle files written beside the output, which are the only extra files a download leaves next to it. Attachments such as fonts are muxed into the container and temporary artwork is deleted, so neither appears. Expect {sidecars} to be empty unless subtitle.output_mode is sidecar or both, which is not the default. A music download writes no sidecars at all.

Paths are absolute and separated by a newline, because a newline is the only character that cannot appear in a filename on any supported OS. The whole list arrives as a single argument, so no quoting is needed in your template.

When one download writes several outputs (-q 1080,720), each output's folder gets its own copy of the sidecar files, and each invocation lists the copies sitting beside its own {filepath}.

subs = [p for p in sys.argv[i].removeprefix("--subs=").split("\n") if p]

Modes

mode	Runs	{filepath}	{sidecars}
file	Once per output file	That file	That output's sidecars
season	Once per season folder, after that season's last queued title	Empty	Empty
run	Once per folder written, at the end of the run	Empty	Empty

!!! warning "season means everything this run asked for" A season hook fires when the last title this run queued for that season finishes. With -w S01-S02 the S01 hook runs while S02 is still downloading. It says nothing about whether the season is complete on disk. Downloading a single episode fires the hook for that season as soon as the episode lands.

A title that fails takes its group with it. If one episode of S01 fails, the S01 hook
does not fire at all, because the run never finished everything it queued for that
season.

The hook is keyed to the folder, not to the season, so one season landing in several folders (-q 1080,720 with a quality-dependent folder template) fires it once per folder, each with its own {folder}. A movie is a group of its own: a season hook fires for a movie's folder as soon as the movie finishes.

In run mode every variable except {folder} is empty, because one run can cover several shows. Only {folder} is meaningful, which makes it useful for starting a library scan once.

Music

Music uses the same three modes, with the album standing in for the season.

mode	Runs
file	Once per track, after its metadata has been written
season	Once per album folder, after every queued track of that album has landed
run	Once per folder written, at the end of the run

In a file hook {title} and {title_raw} are the track name. In an album hook they are the album name, and the per-track variables {track_number}, {disc} and {isrc} are empty, in the same way that {episode} is empty in a season hook.

Events

success runs after the file has moved to its final path. failure runs when the download fails, with {filepath} empty and {error} set. A music failure hook describes the release rather than a track, because the whole album stops when one track fails.

!!! warning "failure only fires in file mode" A failure entry with mode: season or mode: run never runs. Leave mode at its default on a failure entry.

A failure hook has no output file to read metadata from, so it carries only what the title object already knew: {title}, {title_raw}, {title_id}, {year}, {season}, {episode}, {episode_name}, {service}, the tagging IDs and {error}. Everything that comes from the naming context, such as {quality}, {hdr}, {artist} and {album}, is empty.

A resumed --continue download that finishes runs success as usual. Because unshackle does not wait for your script, it never sees its exit code, so a failing script is not reported anywhere. Your script owns its own error handling and logging.

A success hook always names a file this run wrote. There is no skip-if-exists path in dl today, so nothing fires for a title that was not downloaded.

--postscript

dl accepts --postscript "<command>", repeatable. Every command given this way runs with event: success and mode: file.

$ unshackle dl --postscript "python /opt/upload.py {filepath}" SERVICE TITLE_ID

It replaces the post_scripts config for that run rather than adding to it, so no configured entry runs while it is in use. That includes your season, run and failure entries, which have no --postscript equivalent.

The REST API

The API never accepts a post-script command. postscript, post_script and post_scripts in a POST /api/download body are rejected with 400 INVALID_PARAMETERS, because a command arriving from an HTTP caller would be remote code execution.

Scripts defined in unshackle.yaml do run for API jobs, music jobs included. Only the command itself may not cross the network.

Logging

The command that was run is logged twice: at DEBUG level on the console, and as a post_script_dispatch entry in the structured JSON debug log when that log is enabled.

Both are masked the same way, honouring redact_paths, which is on by default. Debug logs get shared in issue reports, and a hook command line is mostly paths. URL credentials and token= / api_key= query parameters are also masked.

!!! warning "Do not hardcode secrets in the command" An arbitrary secret in the command line, such as -H "Authorization: Bearer <key>", cannot be recognised and is logged verbatim. Read the secret from a file or an environment variable inside your script rather than putting it in the command.

Limitations

• No success hooks run under --no-mux or --skip-dl, because neither writes a muxed output. A failure hook still runs under --no-mux if the download itself fails.
• failure hooks only run in file mode.
• There is no webhook sender. Call curl from a script instead.
• Script output is not captured. Redirect it inside your own script if you want a log.