// Install babeliocli, authenticate against Babelio (password or SSO cookie import), and manage the local session file. Use this skill when a user asks to install, log in, set up, connect, or recover a Babelio CLI session — including cases where the Babelio account is linked to Google or Facebook and a classic login is impossible.
Search the Babelio catalogue, open a book's detail page, and read its reader critiques using babeliocli. Use this skill whenever a user wants to find a book on Babelio, look up a book's synopsis / rating / publisher / page count, pull reviews about a specific title, or compare reader opinions programmatically.
Read the authenticated user's Babelio shelves (lus, à lire, en cours, pense-bête, abandonnés, critiqués, non critiqués) using babeliocli. Use this skill whenever a user wants to list their books, count books they've read, group reads by month or year, extract their reading history, compute statistics about their library, find a book they own, or export their Babelio shelves as JSON.
| name | babeliocli-setup |
| description | Install babeliocli, authenticate against Babelio (password or SSO cookie import), and manage the local session file. Use this skill when a user asks to install, log in, set up, connect, or recover a Babelio CLI session — including cases where the Babelio account is linked to Google or Facebook and a classic login is impossible. |
babeliocli is a read-only CLI for babelio.com. It does not use an official API: instead, it logs into the regular web form (or reuses cookies from the user's browser) and parses HTML pages.
One-liner (macOS or Linux, amd64 or arm64):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yoanbernabeu/babeliocli/main/install.sh | sh
Or with Go:
go install github.com/yoanbernabeu/babeliocli@latest
Or grab a binary from the GitHub releases.
babeliocli login --username 'pseudo_or_email'
# Password is prompted (hidden) unless --password-stdin or BABELIO_PASSWORD is set.
For scripts, prefer stdin so the password never appears on a process list:
printf '%s' "$BABELIO_PASSWORD" | babeliocli login --username "$BABELIO_USERNAME" --password-stdin
Environment variables: BABELIO_USERNAME, BABELIO_PASSWORD.
Babelio supports Google and Facebook login. babeliocli does not implement the full OAuth flow; instead, the user imports the cookies they already have in their browser.
https://www.babelio.com:
PHPSESSIDbbacid_userbbacml (optional)babeliocli session import \
--phpsessid 'XXX' \
--bbac 'YYY' \
--id-user 'NNN' \
--username 'pseudo'
Or provide a JSON export from an extension like "EditThisCookie":
babeliocli session import --cookie-file cookies.json --username 'pseudo'
The session is verified by hitting /mabibliotheque.php and confirming we are not redirected to the login page.
babeliocli whoami # shows username, id_user, saved_at
babeliocli logout # removes ~/.config/babeliocli/session.json
The session file lives at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/babeliocli/session.json (usually ~/.config/babeliocli/session.json on Linux/macOS) with mode 0600. Do not commit it to a repository.
If any read command returns session expired: run babeliocli login or babeliocli session import again, re-authenticate. Babelio's session TTL is finite, so expect periodic re-logins.
Every command defaults to JSON. Pass -f text for a readable terminal view. Errors go to stderr so that stdout stays valid JSON:
babeliocli whoami 2>/dev/null | jq .username
| Symptom | Likely cause / fix |
|---|---|
login failed: check username and password | Wrong credentials, or the account is SSO-only → use session import |
imported cookies are not authenticated (redirected to login) | Cookies expired or copied wrong; re-copy from browser |
no saved session (run babeliocli login first) | Nothing has ever been stored; run login or session import |
| Partial or garbled accents | Should not happen: the CLI handles ISO-8859-1. File a bug with the URL. |