Managing scrapers

Scrapers are what feeds your Minato instance. They pull torrents from external sources and push them into your library automatically.

There are two kinds of scrapers you can add:

• Community scrapers — installed from the Minato registry or any public Git repository
• Sidecar scrapers — a separate container you add to your docker-compose.yaml

Installing a community scraper

Go to Settings → Scrapers and choose how you want to install:

From the registry

Browse the official Minato scraper registry, pick a scraper, and click Install. Minato handles everything — no further steps needed.

From a Git repository

If a scraper isn't in the registry, you can install it directly from its source repository. Paste the repository URL into the Install from URL field:

• https://github.com/user/my-scraper
• https://gitlab.com/user/my-scraper
• https://codeberg.org/user/my-scraper
• https://bitbucket.org/user/my-scraper

Minato clones the repository and starts the scraper. You'll see it appear in your scraper list once it's ready.

Updating a scraper

Go to Settings → Scrapers, find the scraper, and click Update. Minato pulls the latest version from the source it was installed from and restarts the scraper.

Your configuration is preserved across updates.

Removing a scraper

Go to Settings → Scrapers, find the scraper, and click Remove. The scraper is stopped and uninstalled. Your configuration is deleted along with it.

Configuring a scraper

Each scraper ships with default settings. You can override them per-instance from the dashboard without editing any files.

Go to Settings → Scrapers, find the scraper, and open its Config panel. Changes take effect the next time the scraper runs.

Controlling a scraper

From Settings → Scrapers you can send commands to any running scraper:

Run now is useful for testing a scraper or forcing a refresh outside its cron schedule. The other commands are for runtime control — scrapers that support them respond immediately; scrapers that don't declare command support finish their current run first.

Yield statistics

Each scraper row shows yield counts that indicate how much content it has produced:

These stats help identify high-volume scrapers, spot dead sources, and track scraping health over time.

Adding a sidecar scraper

Sidecars are full Docker containers. Wire them into your stack by adding a service to docker-compose.yaml:

services:
  my-scraper:
    image: author/my-scraper:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      MINATO_API_URL: http://minato:3000
      MINATO_API_KEY: mk_live_xxxx
      MINATO_SCRAPER_ID: my-scraper
    depends_on:
      - minato

Generate the API key from Settings → API Keys and paste it in. See Sidecar Scrapers for the full setup guide.

Want to build a scraper? See the Building scrapers section in the sidebar.