Labels & Content Routing

Stagearr uses the label (category) assigned to a torrent in qBittorrent to decide how to process and where to import it. Every torrent must have a label for Stagearr to route it correctly.

How labels map to content types

When a torrent completes, qBittorrent calls Stagearr with the torrent's label. Stagearr compares that label against four groups defined in the [labels] section of config.toml:

Config key	What matches	Routes to
`labels.tv`	Primary TV label	TV import pipeline
`labels.tvLabels`	Additional TV aliases	TV import pipeline
`labels.movie`	Primary movie label	Movie import pipeline
`labels.movieLabels`	Additional movie aliases	Movie import pipeline
`labels.skip`	Skip label	No processing at all
(anything else)	Unrecognized label	Passthrough mode

Matching is case-insensitive. The tv and movie values are always checked; tvLabels and movieLabels extend them with additional aliases.

Configuring labels

[labels]
tv = "tv"
movie = "movie"
skip = "skip"
tvLabels    = ["tv", "sonarr", "series"]
movieLabels = ["movie", "radarr", "film"]

The defaults shown above are from config-sample.toml.

Note: The built-in fallback defaults use capitalized values ("TV", "Movie", "NoProcess") so they do not accidentally match common lowercase qBittorrent labels. Set these to match exactly what your torrent client assigns.

tv and tvLabels

tv is the primary TV label. tvLabels is a list of additional labels that are also treated as TV content. You do not need to repeat the tv value inside tvLabels; the primary label is always matched regardless.

TV content is routed to Medusa or Sonarr depending on processing.tvImporter. See Importing for which importer is selected.

movie and movieLabels

movie is the primary movie label. movieLabels extends it with aliases. Movie content is always routed to Radarr.

skip

Any torrent with the skip label is acknowledged by Stagearr but immediately discarded. No files are touched, no staging occurs, and nothing is imported. Use this to prevent Stagearr from processing test downloads or content you want to handle manually.

Passthrough mode

When the torrent label does not match any configured label (TV, movie, or skip), Stagearr enters passthrough mode:

Files are extracted from RAR archives (if present) and copied to the staging folder.
No video remuxing, subtitle processing, or importer call occurs.
The job still completes and a notification is sent (if email is configured).

This is intentional: it lets you use Stagearr as an extraction helper for one-off downloads that do not belong to any media library.

See Pipeline Overview for how passthrough fits into the full processing flow.

Setting up qBittorrent labels

qBittorrent lets you assign categories (labels) per torrent or set default categories per download folder. Configure qBittorrent to use the same label values you set in config.toml. See qBittorrent Integration for the full setup.