Torrents and the VPN guard

No indexer included

anistream hosts no content. It ships no indexer and has no default endpoint. The torrent source is a transport with nothing to search until you configure one. What you point it at is your decision and your responsibility, under the laws that apply to you. The source is off by default, gated behind the VPN guard, and a config edit away from being removed.

anistream provides the torrent transport, a librqbit session behind the VPN guard that streams over loopback HTTP. The search URL, the trackers and any curation service are yours to supply, and the source does nothing until they are set.

Torrent traffic also exposes your IP to every peer in the swarm, so the source stays off until you choose a VPN mode and the guard passes.

[providers.torrent]
enabled = true

# Required. `{query}` is replaced with the URL-encoded search terms.
rss_url = "https://your-indexer.example/?page=rss&q={query}"

# Required in practice: proxy mode disables DHT, so without trackers there are no peers.
trackers = ["udp://tracker.example:1337/announce"]

# Optional: "which release of this is the good one?", keyed on the AniList id.
curation_url = "https://your-curation.example/api/records?filter=(alID={anilist_id})&expand=trs"

[providers.torrent.vpn]
mode = "socks5"                            # "socks5" | "external" | "none"
                                           # "none" also needs i_understand_my_ip_is_exposed = true
socks_url = "socks5://10.64.0.1:1080"      # Mullvad's in-tunnel endpoint
mullvad_exit = true                        # or require_asn_org = ["31173"]
verify_interval_secs = 60
on_leak = "pause"                          # "pause" | "stop" | "warn"
                                           # "warn" also needs
                                           # i_understand_a_failed_check_keeps_torrents_running = true

Streams play while they download, and you can seek in them.

In the apps

The apps keep the same settings under Settings › Sources. Turning Torrents on asks for the torrent index and what protects the traffic, under Protect with: the device’s VPN, a SOCKS5 proxy, or no protection, which you confirm first.

A proxy is checked before it is saved. Turning torrents on with a proxy, switching Protect with to one, or editing it sends the guard’s check through that proxy first, and the app says it is checking. Only a passing check saves the proxy. A failed check saves nothing, says why, and keeps the protection you had.

Once a proxy is set, Edit proxy… sits beside Protect with. It opens the proxy’s form filled in with the saved host, port and user name. Leave the password empty to keep the saved one, or type a new one to replace it.

On Android TV, the index and the proxy come from a page the TV opens on your phone through a QR code, or you type them with the TV’s keyboard. The TV does not download episodes.

What the feed has to look like

Any RSS feed whose <item>s carry a title, a link and an info hash works. Tag names are matched by local name, so <seeders>, <idx:seeders> and <torznab:seeders> are all understood, whatever their namespace. Seeder counts drive ranking, so a feed without them still works but ranks worse.

Curation, if configured, is expected to answer in a PocketBase-shaped collection (items[].expand.trs[] carrying isBest, releaseGroup, dualAudio and a release url). Picks pointing anywhere other than your indexer’s host are ignored, since a link that needs a different account cannot be played.

The VPN guard

Your VPN or proxy is what protects you. The guard checks where torrent traffic leaves from and pauses torrents when that check fails.

• Routes the session through your VPN’s SOCKS5 proxy.
• Turns DHT off. SOCKS5 UDP-associate is unreliable and librqbit does not document whether DHT is tunnelled, so it is treated as a leak.
• Verifies egress through the proxy before any session starts. In external mode the check goes out directly, the way peers connect, whatever HTTPS_PROXY says.
• Keeps checking while it fails, so a VPN connected after launch brings torrents up without a restart. The interface does not wait for it.
• Re-checks on an interval, and pauses every torrent if a check fails. on_leak = "stop" tears the session down instead; "warn" keeps what is running and says the check failed.

The header badge says what the last check found: vpn ● with the exit network when it passed, vpn ✕ unreachable when the proxy or the lookup could not be reached (nothing leaves through a proxy that is down), and vpn ✕ LEAK when traffic was seen leaving through the wrong network.

Limits

This is application-level containment, not kernel-enforced: librqbit has no bind-to-interface option, so the guard stops anistream leaking and nothing else on your machine. Turn on your VPN’s kill switch as well:

mullvad lockdown-mode set on

anistream --doctor reports whether it is on. Mullvad’s in-tunnel 10.64.0.1 is worth preferring for a second reason: it is only reachable through the tunnel, so a dropped tunnel makes the proxy unreachable instead of quietly leaking.

Watched vs. downloaded

Playing while downloading means an episode can count before its file is complete. Watched versus resumable keeps those ideas apart: commit_threshold decides when it is watched, and resume is tracked separately.

Seeding after an episode is watched, and after a download finishes, is off by default, which is a privacy choice. An episode still uploads to its swarm while it plays, as Seeding describes. Completed downloads get subtitles muxed in with a stream copy.

Seeding

An episode uploads to its swarm while it plays, over the guarded connection. What happens after it has been watched is up to you, on the Settings screen under Sources or in config.toml:

[providers.torrent.seeding]
ratio = 1.0              # seed each watched episode until it has given back what it took; 0 is off
hours = 24               # the longest one episode keeps seeding, whatever its ratio
upload_limit_kib = 1024  # total upload in KiB/s, 0 for unlimited

The ratio counts what this machine has of the torrent, so an episode you only partly streamed is not asked to upload more than it fetched. Seeding only runs while anistream is open, a handful of episodes at a time, and the VPN guard stops it along with everything else. The Downloads screen lists what is still seeding, how close each episode is to its ratio and how long it has left.

The upload limit covers all torrent traffic, playback included. On a slow uplink it keeps seeding from crowding out the requests the episode you are watching needs.

Seeding after watching is off by default for the same reason finished downloads stop seeding: it advertises you as a source for as long as it runs, and that is your decision.

What streamed episodes leave on disk, and the limit on it, is covered under Disk space.