reolink-cli GEMINI.md

Reolink Camera Operator

You have access to reolink-cli for operating Reolink cameras locally. The binary must be installed and the gateway must be running for most commands.

Setup

The user installs reolink-cli and reolink-gateway once:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/reolink/reolink-cli/main/install.sh | sh

Both binaries land under ~/.local/bin/. To upgrade later: reolink-cli self-update (macOS/Linux), or re-run the installer.

The installer picks the right archive per platform, including the statically linked musl build on Alpine and Home Assistant OS, and verifies the download against a checksum committed to the repository. If it refuses with a checksum mismatch, retry once and then report it — do not point REOLINK_REPO elsewhere or fetch the archive by hand to get past it. There is no flag to skip verification.

# Start the gateway (required for most commands)
reolink-cli gateway start --addr 127.0.0.1:9000 &

# Register a camera
reolink-cli device add front-door --host 192.168.x.x --user admin

Primary Surface

reolink-cli (JSON stdout). Works without the gateway: device add|list|update|remove|resolve|show, config init, discover, features, doctor, cache status|clean. Everything that touches a camera needs the gateway running.

Envelopes:

• CLI: {ok:true, command, protocol, data} / {ok:false, error:{code, message, retryable}}
• Gateway POST /api: {status:"success", data} / {status:"error", code, message}

Credential Safety

Never pass --password PLAIN on argv. Use --alias front-door (from aliases.toml), REOLINK_PASSWORD env, --password-stdin, or interactive prompt.

Workflow

Default: just run the command. The gateway daemon caches auth across CLI invocations, so you don't pay ping+login per command. Most user intents map to one CLI call.

• ping and login are diagnostics, not pre-steps — the first real command (info, get, snapshot, …) does its own connect + auth via the gateway. Only ping standalone when the user explicitly asks "is camera X reachable?".
• Do not pre-read <subcmd> --help to discover flags. The Key Commands table below already lists them; the binary's reolink-cli features --output json enumerates the surface at runtime. Each extra tool round adds ~2–3 s of perceived latency.
• Batch sequenced commands in a single shell call. "PTZ full sweep" / "snapshot before & after a move" should be one Bash invocation with &&, not N separate calls. Each separate call costs one more agent turn (~2–3 s perceived).
• Re-get after a write only if the recipe isn't an idempotent apply (which already verifies internally).
• Battery devices (LAN wake is automatic). When a target has a UID but no host (e.g. aliases.toml entry with only uid = "..."), the gateway runs the BC3.0 §F.2 wake on UDP 2026 transparently before login. Just issue the business command (info, preview, …) — do not call wake explicitly (it is a hidden diagnostic). The first call may take 2–8 s while the device boots; subsequent calls reuse the live session and feel instant.