Troubleshooting

The handful of things that trip people up, and how to fix each one.

Most of these come down to bilibili's anti-bot and rate-limit behavior, not a bug. bili reports the API's error code and a hint for the common ones.

"risk control" (-352)

A few endpoints are gated by bilibili's anti-bot system for anonymous callers, single-dynamic detail (bili dynamic <id>) being the main one. The fix is to supply a logged-in session:

export BILI_COOKIE='SESSDATA=...; bili_jct=...; DedeUserID=...'
bili dynamic <id>

See configuration for how cookies are supplied. This is an account/IP gate, not something a different request shape gets around.

"rate limited" (-509) or "intercepted" (-412)

You are going too fast. bili already backs off and retries these, and keeps a --rate gap between calls, but a tight loop on an aggressively throttled endpoint (search and a creator's video list are the touchy ones) can still hit them. Raise --rate, lower concurrency, or let the cache absorb repeats. A single transient hit usually clears on the built-in retry.

The endpoint needs a session even though it is not anti-bot gated. Supply a cookie as above. Note that bili nav deliberately works while anonymous: it reports is_login: false and still returns the live WBI keys, which is normal.

"not found" (-404)

The object does not exist, or was removed or made private. Double-check the id with bili id <thing>, which shows how bili classified it. A video that was taken down returns -404 even though the BV id is well-formed.

A favorites list comes back empty

Favorite folders are private by default site-wide. bili favorites <mid> on an account that keeps them private returns an empty list, not an error. That is the owner's privacy setting.

Localized fields are in Chinese

Many fields (titles, area names, descriptions) are authored in Chinese and bili passes them through verbatim; it does not translate. --lang sets the locale sent to endpoints that localize, but most content is whatever the uploader wrote.

Checking what bili resolved

When something behaves unexpectedly, bili id <thing> shows how an id was classified, bili nav shows the session and WBI key state, and bili config show prints the resolved paths and settings. --dry-run prints the exact requests a command would make without sending them, which is the quickest way to see what bili is about to do.