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Skillsastrill-control

astrill-control

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Updated 10-15 21:47

About this skill

Astrill VPN Control (macOS Menu-Bar Toggle + Dual-Probe Verification)

The Astrill macOS app ships no official CLI. Its menu-bar item Menu → Toggle ON/OFF can be located and clicked via AppleScript (System Events), and the menu item text mirrors the connection state — that menu anchor is what this skill relies on. Field-tested 2026-08-28 on OpenVPN full-tunnel mode with an on↔off round-trip.

Usage

Run the bundled script from this skill's base directory (the directory containing this SKILL.md):

bash <skill-dir>/scripts/astrill.sh status   # inspect: app / tunnel / GUI menu / exit IP
bash <skill-dir>/scripts/astrill.sh on       # connect (idempotent: no-op when already connected)
bash <skill-dir>/scripts/astrill.sh off      # disconnect (idempotent: no-op when already disconnected; app stays alive)

Resolve <skill-dir> from the skill base directory announced at load time; when unavailable, ask the user for the installed skill path.

State Machine and Probes

Signal How collected Meaning
App process pgrep -x astrill prerequisite for GUI control; kept alive after off so on reconnects faster
VPN tunnel pgrep -x asovpnc primary judge under OpenVPN mode; teardown takes ~10 s (script polls through it)
GUI menu System Events reads items of the Menu menu Toggle OFF present = connected; Toggle ON present = disconnected
Exit IP curl --max-time 6 ipinfo.io/ip cross-check: connected → foreign node IP; disconnected → local direct IP

on and off are idempotent: each first reads the current state and returns success immediately when the desired state already holds.

One-Time Prerequisite: Accessibility Permission

The app that hosts the agent (terminal, IDE, or desktop app) must hold the macOS Accessibility permission: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → add the host app. Without it the script reports GUI unreachable and the status output names the cause.

Known Boundaries

  • OpenVPN vs OpenWeb: probes are most accurate under OpenVPN (full tunnel). In OpenWeb (browser-only proxy) mode the asovpnc tunnel probe does not apply — the GUI menu text stays the primary judge, and the exit-IP probe (curl) may not reflect the browser proxy state.
  • Teardown latency: after Toggle OFF the tunnel process exits ~10 s later than the UI flips; the script's 30 s polling window covers it.
  • Toggle, not quit: quit app also disconnects but drops the GUI session; the script uses Toggle so the app keeps running and a later on reconnects without relaunching.
  • Menu drift after updates: macOS or Astrill major updates may rename menus. When Menu or Toggle ON/OFF disappears, re-probe with osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "Astrill" to get name of every menu of menu bar 1' and update the script accordingly.
  • Bash pitfall when editing the script: after a $var, a CJK/full-width character makes bash merge the following UTF-8 bytes into the variable name (set -u then reports unbound variable). Always write ${var}.