Kala

A standalone command-line app for watching movies and shows through your own debrid account — no browser, no Electron, no background app. Type a title, pick an episode and a source, and mpv opens playing the stream. That's it.

$ kala watch "in the grey"
what to watch? (12 results, all shown)
> In the Grey (2026) · movie · ★7.1
  ...
checking 8 sources (14 more unchecked)…
  ✓ In.the.Grey.2026.2160p.WEB-DL ...
which source? (all checked + playable)
> ★ In.the.Grey.2026.2160p.WEB-DL  [18.2 GB · 2160p ...]
playing in mpv: In.the.Grey.2026.2160p.WEB-DL.mkv

Kala is a single binary — not a library, not a service, nothing to add to a project. (Unrelated to the kino package on hex.pm, which is Livebook's widget library.)

What it does

• Title-first search via TMDB: movies and shows, season/episode pickers, spelling-variant matching ("gray" finds "Grey"), year hints (kala watch "heat 1995").
• Only playable sources are offered. Every source is actually resolved on your debrid provider before it reaches the picker — dead torrents, DMCA'd files, and 0-seeder stalls are filtered out with the reason shown. Known takedowns are remembered and skipped instantly.
• Ranked like you'd want: releases already in your debrid library first, provider-confirmed-cached next, then resolution tier with bigger files first. Releases in languages other than yours sink to the bottom (KALA_LANG, default English; dual-audio stays).
• Continue watching: kala continue jumps back to the exact episode, source, and second you left off at — the position is checkpointed every 5 seconds while mpv plays, so it survives player crashes and power loss. It's remembered per title/episode, not per stream, so switching to a different source resumes from the same spot.
• Scriptable: kala search/resolve/play emit JSON when piped, so the interactive flow is just one frontend — overlays and scripts are another.

Install

The binaries are self-contained — no Erlang, no Elixir, nothing to add to a project. You just need mpv for playback (fzf is optional but makes the pickers much nicer).

Linux (x86_64):

sudo pacman -S --needed mpv fzf   # or your distro's equivalent
curl -Lo kala https://github.com/alexdont/kala/releases/latest/download/kala_linux_x86_64
chmod +x kala && mkdir -p ~/.local/bin && mv kala ~/.local/bin/

Windows — use WSL2 (the built-in Ubuntu console; Windows 11 or updated Windows 10, so mpv opens as a regular window via WSLg). Then it's exactly the Linux install:

sudo apt install -y mpv fzf chafa
curl -Lo kala https://github.com/alexdont/kala/releases/latest/download/kala_linux_x86_64
chmod +x kala && mkdir -p ~/.local/bin && mv kala ~/.local/bin/

macOS (Apple Silicon) — untested build, feedback welcome:

brew install mpv fzf
curl -Lo kala https://github.com/alexdont/kala/releases/latest/download/kala_macos_aarch64
chmod +x kala && mv kala /usr/local/bin/

From source (needs Elixir; zig + p7zip only for the standalone build):

mix deps.get
mix escript.build               # → ./kala (needs Erlang installed to run)
MIX_ENV=prod mix release kala   # → burrito_out/kala_* (self-contained)

Configure

Run kala setup — an interactive wizard that asks for your two keys, validates them live against the real services, and writes the config for you. (kala doctor later checks every binary, key, and service kala talks to, with latencies.)

Or put keys in ~/.config/kala/config by hand (env vars with the same names also work and take precedence):

# required — your Real-Debrid API token: https://real-debrid.com/apitoken
RD_TOKEN=...
# required for the title flow: https://www.themoviedb.org/settings/api
TMDB_API_KEY=...
# optional second debrid provider: https://torbox.app/settings
#TORBOX_API_KEY=...
# preferred audio language for ranking (dual/multi releases always rank normally)
KALA_LANG=en
# poster previews: auto (sharp pixel graphics), ascii (colored ASCII art),
# ascii-bg (ASCII with painted backgrounds), off
KALA_POSTERS=auto
# intro/credits skipping — detected via AniSkip (anime) + named chapters:
#   ask (default): a "Skip — hold TAB" button appears on the video, skip is your call
#   auto: skip immediately · off: disable (hold Tab = +85s works in ask/auto)
KALA_SKIP=ask
# autoplay the next episode when one ends ("on" to enable — off by default;
# --binge or the post-play menu's autoplay entry do it per session)
KALA_AUTOPLAY=off
# optional: Jackett/Prowlarr (more indexers), OpenSubtitles, Jimaku

kala config shows which keys are set.

Commands

command	what it does
kala watch "<title>"	the whole flow: title → episode → source → mpv
kala resume	instantly resume the last thing you watched
kala continue	pick from your watch history
kala search "<query>"	list raw sources (JSON when piped)
kala resolve <magnet>	magnet → direct stream URL (JSON)
kala play <magnet|url>	resolve and launch mpv directly
kala setup	first-run wizard: keys in, validated live
kala doctor	health-check binaries, keys, and services
kala config	show config status

kala watch --raw "<text>" skips TMDB and searches indexers by text.

Notes

Kala ships no content and hosts nothing. It searches public indexers and drives your own debrid subscription and API keys, the same way a Stremio debrid addon does; takedown responses from the provider are respected and remembered. Real-Debrid and TorBox are wired today, and the resolve step sits behind a behaviour so AllDebrid/Premiumize can be added too.