Downloader

Problem

Describe the user pain, gap, or technical challenge that motivated the work.

Solution

A Python service that accepts media URLs, downloads videos safely with yt-dlp, deduplicates seen links, filters unsupported Reddit posts, and sends videos to Telegram.

Tech Stack

Python, Flask, yt-dlp, Telegram Bot API, Reddit JSON, Linux

Features

• Webhook-style Flask endpoint
• yt-dlp download pipeline
• Telegram video upload
• Seen-link deduplication
• Reddit gallery and image filtering
• File-size and retry safeguards

Architecture & Development Process

Challenges

• Handling transient downloader failures and rate limits
• Keeping Telegram uploads under file-size limits
• Filtering image-only Reddit posts before attempting video downloads

Lessons Learned

• Automation services need strict input filtering and cleanup paths
• Small operational safeguards make hobby bots much easier to run long-term

Roadmap

• Move all runtime settings to environment variables
• Add admin-only controls
• Add structured request logs