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Charlie edited this page Jul 27, 2026 · 1 revision

Provider Architecture

ani-cli-rs ships two independent catalog clients:

CLI value Catalog Native source path ID prefix
anikoto (default) anikotoapi.site plus optional AniList enrichment MegaPlay anikoto:
anikoto2 anikoto.cz website AJAX workflow MegaPlay/VidTube anikoto2:

AllAnime/Mkissa and its rotating cryptographic bootstrap are no longer part of the application.

Module boundaries

Module Responsibility
anikoto Anikoto API/AniList catalog merge and MegaPlay extraction
anikoto_cz Anikoto.cz HTML/AJAX catalog, server tokens, MegaPlay/VidTube extraction
hls_relay Tokenized loopback playlist rewriting and PNG-wrapped TS removal
models Provider IDs, search results, stream metadata, quality/episode ordering
player Safe external-player arguments and relay lifetime
download Downloader fallback order, progress, subtitles, relay lifetime
history Legacy tab-separated history with self-routing provider IDs

Routing

Searches use the explicitly selected provider or the anikoto default. Subsequent commands inspect provider-prefixed IDs:

anikoto:<base64url metadata>  -> Anikoto API client
anikoto2:<base64url metadata> -> Anikoto.cz client

This also makes mixed-provider history continuation deterministic. Raw numeric IDs and raw slugs are intentionally interpreted only by the provider selected with --provider.

Providers never silently fall back to each other. A failure remains attributed to the catalog the user selected.

Shared stream contract

Both clients return StreamLink values containing:

  • validated native media URL;
  • quality label and HLS/direct-media classification;
  • provider/server label;
  • downloadability;
  • narrowly scoped referer, origin, and user-agent headers;
  • optional validated subtitle tracks.

Quality ordering, player launch, downloads, and history updates operate on this shared type and do not need provider-specific branches.

KotoCDN relay

MegaPlay-associated HLS can contain MPEG-TS fragments hidden behind a PNG prefix. hls_relay binds only to 127.0.0.1 on an ephemeral port, rewrites registered playlist resources, validates every upstream URL, and removes a prefix only when three MPEG-TS sync bytes appear 188 bytes apart.

The player/downloader remains attached for the relay lifetime. Dropping HlsRelay signals its accept loop to stop.

This is not an internet-facing proxy and cannot fetch arbitrary caller URLs.

Provider references

Testing

Normal tests use parser fixtures and Wiremock. Live smoke tests are opt-in:

ANI_CLI_LIVE_ANIKOTO=1 cargo test live_anikoto_smoke_test_is_opt_in --lib
ANI_CLI_LIVE_ANIKOTO2=1 cargo test live_anikoto_cz_smoke_test_is_opt_in --lib

Never print complete resolved media URLs in test output or issue reports.

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