Stream probe

probe.mjs answers "is the playlist broken, or is the player broken?" without
opening the app. It is read-only, makes a small number of requests, and redacts
credentials by default.

Usage

# A local playlist (use your own; never commit it)
node .pi/skills/stream-probe/probe.mjs local/list.m3u --limit 5

# A URL (put it in local/ or quote it; do not commit it)
node .pi/skills/stream-probe/probe.mjs "http://provider/get.php?username=...&password=...&type=m3u_plus&output=m3u8"

# Public demo
node .pi/skills/stream-probe/probe.mjs samples/demo.m3u

# Machine-readable
node .pi/skills/stream-probe/probe.mjs local/list.m3u --json --limit 0

# Check the first HLS segment / raw TS bytes
node .pi/skills/stream-probe/probe.mjs samples/demo.m3u --probe-stream

Options: --limit N (default 5), --timeout MS (default 20000), --max-bytes N
(default 30000000), --json, --probe-stream, --show-urls (DANGER), --help.

What it reports

• HTTP status, final URL (redacted), content type, body size.
• UTF-8 / Latin-1 decoding, BOM/CRLF handling.
• m3u entries, Live/Movie/Series/Other counts, group count, duplicate names,
  parse warnings.
• Sample channels (redacted) with type, group, quality tag.
• HLS master vs media, variant count, segment count, target duration, AES-128,
  VOD (#EXT-X-ENDLIST), first segment, optional first-variant probe.
• Optional first-segment/raw-TS probe: status, content type, bytes read, TS sync
  (0x47), fMP4 (ftyp).

Expected result on a large mixed list: a total entry count and per-type counts.
Use a synthetic fixture for regression tests; never commit a real provider list.

Safety and etiquette

• Only probe playlists/streams the user owns or public test streams.
• The script limits redirects to 5 and applies a per-request timeout. Do not run
  it in a loop against a provider.
• --probe-stream fetches only the first 1 KB with a Range request.
• Basic auth in the URL is sent only to the original origin; redirects to another
  host do not receive it.
• --show-urls prints credentials. Use it only in a private terminal and never
  paste the output into an issue, commit, or screenshot.
• The script never downloads a full channel stream.

When to use it

Interpreting common failures

• HTML kind: wrong URL, expired login, captive portal, or proxy error page.
• HTTP 403 on a channel but playlist OK: provider rejects the player UA,
  subscription limits, or the channel is offline. Try a different variant.
• HLS master with 0 variants: malformed manifest or an HTML error body.
• Segment 200 but no TS sync / no ftyp: server returned an error page with
  a 200 status, or the segment is encrypted in a way Media3 does not support.
• Huge body with few entries: the list is padded with huge logo URLs; the
  app should still stream-parse it.
• --probe-stream timeout: the provider is slow or blocked; raise the
  timeout once, do not hammer it.

Do not paste raw provider URLs or credentials into the final report. Report the
redacted host, status, and counts.