How the Agent-Reach Doctor Command Checks Channel Availability

The agent-reach doctor command checks channel availability by delegating self-diagnostic tests to every registered channel class, aggregating their (status, message) results, and rendering them into a human-readable Rich-formatted report.

The doctor sub-command is the health-checking engine of the open-source Agent Reach project. Its purpose is to verify that every supported channel—a platform integration—is correctly installed and configured by probing external tools. According to the Panniantong/Agent-Reach source code, the entire workflow is orchestrated in agent_reach/doctor.py while individual channel classes in agent_reach/channels/ supply the platform-specific logic.

Channel Discovery Through the Global Registry

Before any test runs, the system must know which platforms exist. agent_reach/channels/__init__.py maintains a global list called ALL_CHANNELS that holds every channel class. It exposes the helper get_all_channels(), which returns this list so the doctor engine knows exactly which integrations to examine.

The check_all() Orchestration Loop

The central coordinator lives in agent_reach/doctor.py. Its check_all() function iterates over the collection returned by get_all_channels() and, for each channel object, invokes ch.check(config). This call returns a (status, message) pair that is stored alongside static metadata—name, description, tier, and back-ends—inside a dictionary keyed by the channel’s name attribute.

Channel-Specific Availability Checks

Every concrete channel inherits from agent_reach.channels.base.Channel. The base class supplies a default check() implementation that simply reports "ok", which is sufficient for built-in channels that require no external tooling. Real-world channels override this method to probe their dependencies and interpret the results.

Default Check in the Base Channel Class

Inside agent_reach/channels/base.py, the abstract Channel class defines the interface. When a subclass does not override check(), the inherited behavior returns an "ok" status. This ensures that pure built-in integrations automatically pass the health screen without extra configuration.

Example: TwitterChannel.check() Probes twitter-cli

A representative override appears in agent_reach/channels/twitter.py. The TwitterChannel.check() method uses shutil.which to locate the twitter-cli binary. If the binary is found, it executes twitter status and parses the output; a successful response yields ("ok", …). If the binary is absent, it returns ("warn", "Twitter CLI 未安装…"). When the binary is present but the user is not authenticated, it emits a distinct warning message rather than an error.

Probes for YouTube, Weibo, and Bilibili

Other channels follow the same pattern. They each look for a specific external binary or library and map the outcome to a status string:

• YouTube probes for yt-dlp
• Weibo probes for mcporter
• Bilibili probes for bili-cli

Depending on whether the tool is missing, misconfigured, present but unauthenticated, or fully ready, the overridden check() method returns ok, warn, off, or error.

Report Formatting and CLI Output

Once check_all() finishes, agent_reach/doctor.py passes the result dictionary to format_report(). This function converts the raw statuses into a Rich-styled terminal report grouped by tier, prefixes colored symbols, and prints a summary line such as:

状态：✅ 3/5 个渠道可用

A typical truncated report looks like this:

Agent Reach 状态
========================================

✅ 装好即用：
  ✅ YouTube — 内置
  ✅ GitHub — 内置

可选渠道（已安装）：
  ✅ Twitter — twitter-cli 完整可用（搜索、读推文、时间线、长文/Article、用户查询、Thread）
  ✅ Bilibili — bili-cli 已安装

状态：[green]4/5[/green] 个渠道可用
还有 1 个可选渠道可以解锁（Weibo），告诉你的 Agent「帮我装 Weibo」即可

Programmatic and CLI Usage

The doctor command is registered in agent_reach/cli.py under the sub-parser "doctor". When invoked, _cmd_doctor() instantiates Config() and calls check_all() followed by format_report().

Run the check from your terminal:

python -m agent_reach.cli doctor

You can also trigger the same logic from another Python script:

from agent_reach.doctor import check_all, format_report
from agent_reach.config import Config

cfg = Config()
results = check_all(cfg)            # dict of channel statuses

print(format_report(results))       # pretty text report

Summary

• agent_reach/channels/__init__.py registers every platform class in ALL_CHANNELS and exposes get_all_channels().
• agent_reach/doctor.py implements check_all() to iterate over channels and format_report() to render a Rich-styled status report.
• Each channel inherits from agent_reach.channels.base.Channel and overrides check() to probe its specific external dependencies.
• The CLI entry point in agent_reach/cli.py wires the doctor sub-command directly to check_all(Config()).

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the agent-reach doctor command actually test?

It validates whether each supported platform channel is locally ready for use by checking that required external binaries or libraries are installed and authenticated. It does not test live network connectivity to the platforms themselves; instead, it relies on each channel’s check() method to inspect local tooling state.

How does a channel report that it is unavailable?

A channel’s check() method returns a (status, message) tuple. The status string can be ok, warn, off, or error, depending on whether the external tool is missing, misconfigured, disabled, or fully operational.

Can I run channel health checks programmatically without the CLI?

Yes. Import check_all and format_report from agent_reach.doctor, instantiate a Config, and call check_all(cfg) to receive a dictionary of results. You can then pass that dictionary to format_report() for pretty printing or inspect the raw statuses directly in your own automation.

Which file should I modify to customize a channel's availability check?

You should override the check() method in your concrete channel file—for example, agent_reach/channels/twitter.py for Twitter. All custom channels must inherit from the Channel base class defined in agent_reach/channels/base.py so that check_all() can discover and invoke them uniformly.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "instagit": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "instagit@latest"]
    }
  }
}