Metadata Retrieval Without Tracking

A Beam agent queries a self-hosted Invidious instance for a video's title, description, and publish status instead of calling YouTube directly, avoiding the tracking and account exposure that comes with the standard site. It applies this in place of a YouTube lookup wherever a workflow only needs public video details, not an account action. Where the Invidious instance itself is unreachable or returns an error, the agent falls back to a plain YouTube check if one is configured, or flags the request for a person, rather than silently failing to return an answer.

Instance Health Checks

Since a self-hosted Invidious instance depends on the operator's own server and can fall out of sync with YouTube's changing site, a Beam agent periodically confirms the instance is responding and returning valid video data, not an error page or empty result. It compares a known test video's data against expected values to catch a broken instance early. A failed check gets written to a status log and, after a set number of consecutive failures, a person running the instance is notified, so a quiet outage doesn't go unnoticed for days.

Feed and Subscription Watch

For a workflow that follows new uploads from a specific channel, a Beam agent checks the subscribed channel's feed on an Invidious instance on an approved schedule and notes any new video since the last check. It applies the same polling interval across every followed channel rather than checking some more often than others without reason. Where a channel's feed appears empty when uploads are expected, a sign the channel or the instance itself is having an issue, the agent flags the discrepancy for a person instead of assuming the channel has simply gone quiet.