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transistor

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Updated 10-16 02:28

About this skill

transistor — Transistor.fm podcast hosting from the terminal

Drive a Transistor.fm account over its v1 JSON:API: shows, episodes, the draft→publish lifecycle, per-day download analytics, private-podcast subscribers, and webhooks. Responses are JSON:API documents; the bundled CLI unwraps them (--json) while preserving the raw shapes agents need for jq. Write commands are guarded: episode creation is always a draft, and publishing goes through its own dedicated endpoint.

Setup

  1. Find your API key on the Transistor dashboard Account page → API Access (https://dashboard.transistor.fm/account) and export it:
export TRANSISTOR_API_KEY="<API_KEY>"
  1. Verify the key (GET /v1 — the authorization probe; there is no /v1/user route):
transistor user          # name and time zone
transistor user --json | jq '{id, name, time_zone}'

A key carries the dashboard role of its user (owner / admin / team member) per podcast. --help and --dry-run work without credentials. Requests are rate-limited to 10 per 10 seconds; the CLI dies with a clear 429 message instead of hammering.

Essential Commands

user — authorization probe

transistor user                # who does this key belong to?
transistor user --json

shows / show — browse podcasts

transistor shows                          # newest-updated first
transistor shows --private --json         # private podcasts only
transistor show --id <SHOW_ID_OR_SLUG>    # full attributes incl. feed_url
transistor shows --page 1 --per 20 --json

Show ids and slugs are interchangeable on most show-scoped routes. Show resources carry no counts fields — count via episodes --show ... --json, then meta.totalCount.

episodes / episode — browse episodes

transistor episodes                                    # newest first, all shows
transistor episodes --show <SHOW_ID> --status draft    # drafts for one show
transistor episodes --show <SHOW_ID> --per 50 --page 1 --json
transistor episode --id <EPISODE_ID> --include show    # compound doc + parent show

--include show adds included[] (the JSON:API compound document); every episode item in --json output already carries show_id resolved from relationships. --limit works as an alias for --per for old scripts.

episode-create / episode-update — drafts and metadata

transistor episode-create --show <SHOW_ID> --title "Ep 12: Roasting" \
  --season 2 --number 4 --audio-url "https://uploads.example.com/ep12.mp3"
transistor episode-update --id <EPISODE_ID> --title "New title"
transistor episode-update --id <EPISODE_ID> --audio-url "<AUDIO_URL>"   # attach audio

episode-create ALWAYS produces a draft (status: "draft", published_at: null) — it never publishes. episode-update changes metadata or attaches audio and never touches publishing state.

episode-publish — the lifecycle switch

transistor episode-publish --id <EPISODE_ID>                       # publish now
transistor episode-publish --id <EPISODE_ID> --status scheduled \
  --published-at "2026-09-03 09:00:00"                             # schedule
transistor episode-publish --id <EPISODE_ID> --status draft        # unpublish

Hits PATCH /v1/episodes/<EPISODE_ID>/publish with episode[status]=draft|scheduled|published — the documented dedicated endpoint. The CLI refuses to publish an episode whose media_url is still empty (an unplayable item would hit every subscriber's feed); pass --force to override.

authorize-upload — local audio (max 5GB)

transistor authorize-upload --filename ep12.mp3                 # plan only
transistor authorize-upload --filename ep12.mp3 --file ./ep12.mp3

Returns (and, with --file, performs) the signed PUT; the printed audio_url is what you attach with episode-create/episode-update. The signed URL expires (~600 s in the docs' example).

analytics / episode-analytics — downloads per day

transistor analytics --show <SHOW_ID>                        # last 14 days
transistor analytics --show <SHOW_ID> \
  --start-date 01-08-2026 --end-date 28-08-2026 --json
transistor episode-analytics --id <EPISODE_ID> --json

Dates are dd-mm-yyyy and must come in pairs. Analytics attributes are per-day downloads[] arrays, not totals; the CLI sums them into downloads_total and keeps the raw array.

subscribers — private podcast audience

transistor subscribers --show <SHOW_ID> --json
transistor subscriber-create --show <SHOW_ID> --email "listener@example.com"
transistor subscriber-batch --show <SHOW_ID> --email "a@example.com" --email "b@example.com"
transistor subscriber-delete --show <SHOW_ID> --email "a@example.com"   # or --id

webhooks — push instead of poll

transistor webhooks --show <SHOW_ID>
transistor webhook-create --show <SHOW_ID> --event episode_published \
  --url "https://example.com/hooks/transistor"
transistor webhook-delete --id <WEBHOOK_ID>

Events: episode_created, episode_published, subscriber_created, subscriber_deleted. Cap: 50 per account. With a 10 req / 10 s limit, webhooks beat polling for freshness.

Global flags

transistor --json shows                        # flags work in any position
transistor --dry-run episodes --show <SHOW_ID> # request plan, zero network
transistor --force episode-publish --id <EPISODE_ID>   # skip the audio guard
transistor --quiet shows                       # suppress non-essential output
transistor --verbose episodes                  # detailed stderr logging

--dry-run emits {"dry_run": true, "method", "path", "params"} (write commands add the exact body that would be sent — bracket keys and all), so you can verify a plan before touching the API. --help and --dry-run never require credentials.

Pipeline recipes

Create, attach audio, publish (the core workflow)

export TRANSISTOR_API_KEY="<API_KEY>"
SHOW=$(transistor shows --json | jq -r '.shows[0].id')          # string id
AUDIO=$(transistor authorize-upload --filename ep12.mp3 --file ./ep12.mp3 --json | jq -r '.audio_url')
EP=$(transistor episode-create --show "$SHOW" --title "Ep 12" \
     --audio-url "$AUDIO" --json | jq -r '.id')                 # draft id
transistor episode-publish --id "$EP"                           # dedicated endpoint
transistor episode --id "$EP" --json | jq '{status, media_url, published_at}'

Each stage's output feeds the next: shows → string id, authorize-upload → string audio_url, episode-create → string draft id, episode-publish → final status. Stage 2 is skippable when the audio already has a public URL (pass it straight to episode-create).

Draft triage: what is not out yet?

transistor episodes --show <SHOW_ID> --status draft --json \
  | jq -r '.episodes[] | [.id, .title, (if .media_url == "" then "no-audio" else "ready" end)] | @tsv'
# publish the ready ones (rate limit: 10 req / 10 s — add sleep 1 between calls)

Weekly downloads report

transistor shows --json | jq -r '.shows[].id' | while read -r S; do
  transistor analytics --show "$S" --json \
    | jq -r --arg id "$S" '[$id, (.downloads_total|tostring)] | @tsv'
  sleep 1
done

JSON and jq

--json keys are stable snake_case wrappers around the JSON:API document: shows/episodes/subscribers/webhooks (arrays with meta attached), flat objects for single resources, dry_run/method/path/params/body for plans. Attributes keep Transistor's own names — status, season, number, duration (seconds), media_url, share_url, published_at, feed_url — so jq selectors transfer directly to raw curl against api.transistor.fm. Collection pagination surfaces as meta.currentPage/meta.totalPages/meta.totalCount. Example: transistor episodes --show <SHOW_ID> --json | jq -r '.episodes[] | [.id, .title, .status] | @tsv'. For compound documents the CLI resolves relationships (show_id) and prints included show summaries in human mode; with raw curl, match included[] by type and relationships.show.data.id.

Known Gotchas

  • Publishing is a separate endpoint, never a side effect — POST /episodes and PATCH /episodes/:id cannot change status. If an episode stays draft, the missing step is PATCH /v1/episodes/<ID>/publish with episode[status]=published. (The pre-thickening CLI had no publish path at all.)
  • The user probe is GET /v1 — /v1/user and /v1/authorization are 404s, and the user resource has no email attribute (name and time_zone only).
  • Pagination is pagination[page] + pagination[per] (defaults 0 and 10; docs' examples request page 1). pagination[limit] and page[number] are silently ignored — loops using them re-read page 1 forever. Loop while meta.currentPage < meta.totalPages.
  • Show resources carry no counts — derive episode/subscriber counts from filtered listings' meta.totalCount.
  • Analytics are per-day arrays, not totals — sum attributes.downloads (the CLI provides downloads_total); date bounds are dd-mm-yyyy and come in pairs; do not parse the row date format (docs' examples are inconsistent between sections).
  • Show creation is dashboard-only — there is no POST /v1/shows; show-update is the only show write.
  • Rate limit 10 req / 10 s — a 429 blocks access for 10 seconds. No retry headers; back off, batch subscriber imports, cache responses, and use webhooks for freshness. Transistor explicitly forbids using the API as a website back end (parse the RSS feed for that).
  • episode[published_at] uses the show's time zone (a show attribute), not UTC; scheduling and backdating both ride the publish endpoint.
  • Audio processing is asynchronous — watch audio_processing / processing_failure after attaching audio; publishing an unprocessed or failed file pushes silence to subscribers.
  • Signed upload URLs expire (~600 s in the docs' example): authorize, PUT with the returned content_type, attach promptly.
  • Error bodies are not formally specified — the CLI handles JSON:API errors[] arrays and bare {"message": ...} objects, flattening either to one stderr line; 401 (bad key), 403 (role), 404 (bad id/route), 429 (rate limit) have distinct hints.

When to use

Use this skill for anything that reads or drives a Transistor.fm account through its API: verifying API access, browsing shows/episodes (including drafts and compound documents), running the episode lifecycle (create → attach audio → publish/schedule/unpublish), pulling download analytics windows, importing or revoking private-podcast subscribers, and registering webhooks.

When not to use

Do not use this skill for other podcast hosts (Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Megaphone, Spotify for Creators — use their own APIs/tooling); for audio production or editing (ffmpeg and DAW territory); for generic RSS feed parsing or website rendering (parse the feed XML directly — Transistor says the API is not a back-end data source); for creating new shows (the API cannot — the dashboard does); or for platform-level distribution questions (Apple/Spotify submission is a dashboard and RSS concern).

Reference Files

File Use it for
references/auth-and-basics.md x-api-key auth, key location and role scoping, the JSON:API envelope (data/attributes/relationships/included[]) with jq patterns, pagination params, error surfaces
references/endpoint-catalog.md Every route's method, path, and parameters (shows, episodes, publish, uploads, analytics, subscribers, webhooks) plus routes that do not exist
references/episode-publish-lifecycle.md The draft/scheduled/published state machine, the exact publish request/response shapes, create→audio→publish recipes in CLI and curl, authorize-upload detour
references/gotchas-and-recipes.md Symptom → cause → fix field guide (404 user route, silent pagination, 429 storms...) and multi-step workflows (bulk scheduling, analytics reports, subscriber import, webhooks)

Available Scripts and Prerequisites

  • scripts/transistor — the bundled Python CLI (--json, --dry-run, --force, --quiet, --verbose, --help everywhere). Imports only the standard library and requests; sends write bodies exactly as documented (bracket-key form fields).
  • scripts/test_transistor.py — offline test suite (pytest + unittest compatible); all HTTP mocked with canned JSON:API documents, zero network egress, no live-call cases (Transistor is a keyed API).
  • Requires Python 3.8+, requests, and TRANSISTOR_API_KEY for live commands (Account page → API Access). No service is started by this skill.