Three changes from automated review on PR #376:
1. Add `--` option terminator before host in _wrap_ytdlp_cmd (P1 security)
Prevents SSH option injection if LAST30DAYS_YT_SSH_HOST were ever set
to a value starting with `-` (e.g. `-oProxyCommand=...`). Low
exploitability since the env var is user-controlled config — but the
fix is a single arg and turns a self-harm footgun into no footgun.
2. Hoist `import shlex` to module-level (P2 style)
Pure stdlib import, no reason for the deferred form. Cleaner.
3. Cache _ytdlp_ssh_host() result in fetch_transcript (P2 style)
Was being called 2-3x per video; the function is cheap (env lookup
+ strip) so this is purely about readability.
Adds test_wrap_cmd_uses_option_terminator covering the security fix
explicitly with a `-oFoo=bar` host value. Updates index assertions in
the two existing tests that check command shape (host is now at index
4, command string at 5, with `--` at 3).
Adds LAST30DAYS_YT_SSH_HOST env var (or `~/.config/last30days/.env` key).
When set, yt-dlp YouTube search invocations are wrapped as
`ssh <host> "yt-dlp ..."` so they run on a residential-IP machine.
Motivation: when last30days runs on a datacenter VPS (Hetzner,
DigitalOcean, AWS, etc.), `ytsearch:` queries return 0 results because
YouTube's bot-wall fingerprints datacenter IP ranges before any cookie
check runs. Cookies alone don't fix this — the IP reputation is checked
first. Verified across yt-dlp stable 2026.03.17 and nightly builds.
The existing fallbacks (browser cookies, residential proxy services,
excluding YouTube) all have downsides: cookies expire, proxies cost
money, exclusion loses signal. Many users with a Mac mini, Pi, or
home server can host yt-dlp on their own residential IP — this just
needs an SSH alias and a one-line env var to wire it up.
Behaviour:
- Default (env var unset): identical to before, no shape change.
- Env var set: search command list is wrapped with `ssh -o BatchMode=yes
<host> "<shell-quoted yt-dlp invocation>"`. is_ytdlp_installed()
returns True without a local PATH check (the binary lives on the
remote host).
- Transcript path: when SSH-routing is on, skips the yt-dlp transcript
path (which writes a VTT file we couldn't easily read back over SSH)
and uses the existing _fetch_transcript_direct HTTP fallback. The
timedtext API isn't bot-walled, so this works fine on datacenter IPs.
Setup pitfall documented in the function docstring: on macOS hosts
with Homebrew, `eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv zsh)"` must
live in ~/.zshenv (not just ~/.zprofile) — non-login SSH shells don't
source .zprofile, so without this `ssh macmini "yt-dlp ..."` returns
"command not found" while interactive SSH works fine.
Tests: 10 new cases covering env var read, whitespace stripping,
empty-value handling, command wrapping passthrough/active modes,
shlex quoting, is_ytdlp_installed short-circuit, and end-to-end
search_youtube wrapping. Full test suite: 0 new failures (the 14
pre-existing failures in test_store, test_watchlist, test_setup_openclaw,
test_safari_cookies, test_version_consistency are unchanged on main).
Verified live: 0 results → 4 real hits for "claude code" search from a
Hetzner VPS routed through a Mac mini exit node on Tailscale.
bird_x.py and youtube_yt.py had four near-identical copies of the same
subprocess cleanup dance (Popen + os.setsid + communicate(timeout) +
SIGTERM via killpg + proc.kill() fallback + wait(5)). Extract to
lib.subproc.run_with_timeout(), which:
- runs the child in its own process group via os.setsid where available
- raises SubprocTimeout on timeout
- on timeout: SIGTERM the group, fall back to proc.kill(), wait up to 5s
- accepts an on_pid callback so bird_x can still register child PIDs
with last30days.register_child_pid for whole-process cleanup
- captures stdout/stderr as strings in a SubprocResult dataclass
Migrated call sites: _run_bird_search, search_handles inner worker,
search_youtube, fetch_transcript. With the helper in place, the signal
and subprocess imports became dead in both files (plus os in
youtube_yt) and went with them.
Tests: 9 new subproc tests cover success, non-zero exit, stderr capture,
timeout-raises, timeout-kills-group, missing-command, env passthrough,
PID callback, and callback-exception suppression. test_env_v3 and
test_youtube_yt patch subproc.run_with_timeout instead of the removed
bird_x.subprocess and yt-dlp subprocess.
Add extract_transcript_highlights() that scores sentences by specificity
(numbers, proper nouns, topic relevance) and filters YouTube filler
(subscribe, welcome back, etc). Top 5 highlights shown as structured
bullets in compact output. Full transcript moved to collapsible <details>
block so the LLM reads highlights first, full text on demand.
SKILL.md updated to instruct the judge agent to quote highlights
directly in synthesis, same as Reddit top comments.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
shoobee