arr-library-hygiene

Arr Library Hygiene

The monitored flag drives every automated search. When it drifts from what you intended, the app either hunts for things it should ignore or sits silent when you expect it to work. Both look like bugs elsewhere.

Assumes arr-connect. In particular: deletes are permanent, there is no recycle bin unless you configured one, and a command returning queued means accepted, not successful.

Three ways monitoring drifts

1. Segment-aired shows create permanent phantom missing episodes

Cartoons and sketch shows that aired as segments are often catalogued with each segment as its own episode entry, while your files are whole broadcast episodes. The app counts the extra segment entries as missing forever. Every night it re-searches, grabs a season pack, fails to import with episode file already imported, and refills the queue. The queue length looks alarming and never drops.

Diagnose by comparing counts, not by reading the queue:

curl -sf -H "X-Api-Key: $ARR_KEY" "$ARR_URL/api/v3/series/$SID?includeSeriesStats=true" \
  | jq '{title, episodeCount: .statistics.episodeCount,
         episodeFileCount: .statistics.episodeFileCount,
         pct: (.statistics.episodeFileCount / .statistics.episodeCount * 100 | floor)}'

A gap that never closes across days, on a show that finished airing years ago, is this pattern rather than a sourcing problem.

Fix: unmonitor only the monitored-but-file-less episodes, then clear the stuck queue.

# the episodes that will never arrive
IDS=$(curl -sf -H "X-Api-Key: $ARR_KEY" "$ARR_URL/api/v3/episode?seriesId=$SID" \
  | jq -c '[.[] | select(.monitored and (.hasFile | not)) | .id]')

curl -sf -X PUT -H "X-Api-Key: $ARR_KEY" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d "{\"episodeIds\": $IDS, \"monitored\": false}" \
  "$ARR_URL/api/v3/episode/monitor"

For a finished show this stops the grabbing and keeps every existing file. For a still-airing show, do not do this: you would unmonitor genuinely missing episodes. Check the series status first.