What is hardseed?

Hardseed is a command-line tool written in C++ that batch-downloads images and torrent files from two specific Chinese-language adult content forums, CaoLiu and AiCheng. You run it from a terminal, point it at a content category, and it automatically fetches the listed posts and saves the associated files to a folder on your computer. The tool organizes content into 13 categories, which it calls av classes. These separate the two source forums and divide the content by origin and type. You select one category per run and specify how many topic pages to scan. The program names the output folder automatically based on the category and time of download. Because the target forums are blocked in China, the tool is built around proxy support. It accepts connections through GoAgent, Shadowsocks, SSH tunnels, and VPN setups. You can supply multiple proxies at once, and the tool runs concurrent downloads through each one simultaneously, which the README says increases download speed significantly. Filtering options let you skip topics whose titles contain words you want to avoid, or restrict downloads to topics containing words you specify. You set a timeout for individual image downloads and control how many concurrent tasks run per proxy. The README is written partly in Chinese and partly in English. It includes animated GIF demos showing the tool running. The repository was last actively updated around early 2016. Installation instructions cover Linux and macOS from source, and a pre-compiled Windows binary is included in the repository.