Homelabs

Trying to automate the following process. Can be done via the macOS host system or the docker containers.

0. FLAC file enters folder watched by app
1. Musicbrainz metadata and lyrics automatically added 
2. A zipped folder of the album is created and moved to my Proton Drive in a set location
3. The FLAC files are converted to ALAC
4. The ALAC files are moved to my music folder which is watched by my Jellyfin server

I know that shortcuts plus hazel would likely allow me to do this on the Mac host system, but I don’t know how to do it on docker or whether it’s preferable one way or the other.

Also to note: technically step 1 is already done by Jellyfin.

Any advice is welcome

chatgpt Below is a “bare-bones” recipe that removes Hazel, Docker, and even a GUI.
You end up with one plain Bash file plus a tiny launchd agent—nothing else.
Copy-paste, adjust the paths, and you’re done.

⸻

0  Prerequisites (one-time)

# Homebrew installs
brew install ffmpeg rclone fswatch beets   # beets optional, see step 1

	•	ffmpeg – converts FLAC → ALAC (-acodec alac) losslessly.
	•	rclone – talks to Proton Drive (run rclone config once).
	•	fswatch – light wrapper around FSEvents; pegged at < 1 MB RAM.
	•	beets – only if you still want automatic MusicBrainz tagging.

⸻

1  The shell script (album-pipeline.sh)

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

### CONFIG #############################################################
INBOX="$HOME/Music/IncomingFLAC"
PROTON_REMOTE="proton:MusicBackups"
JELLYFIN_DIR="$HOME/Music/ALAC"
TMPDIR="$(mktemp -d)"
#######################################################################

# fswatch gives us the *file* that triggered the event.  We want its folder.
album_dir=$(dirname "$1")

# 1. Metadata (optional) — let Jellyfin handle it, or uncomment beets:
# beet import -q "$album_dir"

# 2. Zip a backup and upload
zip_file="${TMPDIR}/$(basename "$album_dir").zip"
(cd "$album_dir" && zip -qr "$zip_file" .)
rclone move "$zip_file" "${PROTON_REMOTE}/"

# 3. Convert FLAC → ALAC
find "$album_dir" -name '*.flac' -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d '' f; do
  ffmpeg -loglevel error -i "$f" -acodec alac -map_metadata 0 \
         "${f%.flac}.m4a"
done

# 4. Move ALAC files to Jellyfin watch folder
dest="$JELLYFIN_DIR/$(basename "$album_dir")"
mkdir -p "$dest"
mv "$album_dir"/*.m4a "$dest/"

# 5. Optional clean-up (comment out if you want to keep originals)
rm -rf "$album_dir"

Make it executable: chmod +x album-pipeline.sh

⸻

2  The folder-watcher (com.user.album-pipeline.plist)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
          "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>           <string>com.user.album-pipeline</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/usr/local/bin/fswatch</string>
    <string>-0</string>              
    <string>-e</string><string>.*</string>
    <string>-i</string><string>\.flac$</string>
    <string>"$HOME/Music/IncomingFLAC"</string>
    <string>|</string>
    <string>xargs</string><string>-0</string>
    <string>/path/to/album-pipeline.sh</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>       <true/>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>       <true/>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key><string>/tmp/album-pipeline.log</string>
  <key>StandardOutPath</key> <string>/tmp/album-pipeline.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>

	•	Save it in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/,
	•	launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.album-pipeline.plist

That’s it—every new FLAC dropped in IncomingFLAC triggers the pipeline.

⸻

Why this is “simplest”

Layer	What we kept	What we ditched
Trigger	fswatch + launchd (native)	Hazel rules, Docker sidecars
Logic	~45 lines of Bash	Full SwiftUI menubar app
Tools	ffmpeg, zip, rclone (all CLI)	TagLibKit, Swift packages, UI code

The whole stack is transparent, debuggable with echo, and fully portable to any other Mac (copy two files and run brew bundle).
If you later crave a prettier UI, wrap the same script in Shortcuts or a minimal SwiftUI front-end—but you don’t have to.

Can you explain what you mean by “removes”? Like it “removes the need for” or it removes from my system?

Essentially I want to store backups of my albums in FLAC format, ideally store in zip folders to save a little extra space in the cloud. But, I want to play my music in ALAC to minimize transcoding and allow native playback on apple devices.

I can do all of this manually with:

- file manager
- MusicBrainz Picard
- file compression software
- XLD 

But I’d love to automate the process fully. I know Hazel could be an option for some of the automation

Who is into n8n ? I just started using it last week (self-hosting on my NAS).

I am building my alter ego as an agent to help me across different things, marketing for @tipdotmd being one of them.

Let me know if you have good flow ideas.

You'd only need docker here if it helps with the scheduler/service, assuming all the folders are mounted. Depending on how much code you want to write the biggest question is likely automating the compression step. 
Check out n8n for building the flow

I think the agent can to some extent. Mostly that it handles automation flows like zapier or ifttt.

Interesting I had heard the name n8n but didn’t know what it was. It builds automations? Will look into it thanks!

You'd only need docker here if it helps with the scheduler/service, assuming all the folders are mounted. Depending on how much code you want to write the biggest question is likely automating the compression step. 
Check out n8n for building the flow
https://farcaster.xyz/xr0am-/0x678d6645