VisaLark
· 中文说明
VisaLark checks the US visa appointment calendar on ais.usvisa-info.com from your own logged-in browser and pings your phone (Bark, ServerChan/WeChat, Telegram or a webhook) when an earlier date opens at a consulate you would accept.
[!WARNING]
Read before using. Automated access to the appointment site may break its terms of service, and the site can restrict accounts it considers automated. You use VisaLark at your own risk. It only reuses the session you logged into yourself, never stores your password, does not solve CAPTCHAs or rotate proxies, and stops as soon as the site challenges it. Automatic rescheduling is off by default, replaces your existing appointment when it fires, and has not been verified end to end against real accounts.
| Extension popup | Auto-reschedule settings (off unless you choose the "auto" mode) |
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Both screenshots are the built extension rendered with made-up data (no real account involved).
Why I built it
Moving a US visa interview earlier usually means refreshing the scheduling page for days, especially at the consulates in China. The scripts I found either run on a cloud server or ask for your password, and both made me nervous about the visa account itself. I wanted something that does the boring part, checking every few minutes at a slow, jittered pace from the browser I already logged into, and tells my phone when a date worth taking shows up.
It will not win slots that disappear within seconds of being released, and it does not try to: that requires the proxy pools and evasion this project leaves out on purpose.
What it does
- Watches several consulates at once and reports the earliest date that fits your filters (date window, weekdays, time of day). The expedite calendar can be watched too.
- Notifies through Bark (iOS), ServerChan (WeChat), Telegram, a generic webhook and the browser's own notifications.
- Three modes per monitor:
notify (default) only alerts; confirm puts a button in the alert that opens a confirmation page, and you click to reschedule; auto reschedules on its own, behind the checks below.
- Backs off on trouble. An expired session (401, redirect to sign-in) or a challenge page (403, CAPTCHA) pauses the monitor and alerts you; rate limiting (429, Cloudflare error 1015) triggers a long back-off. It never tries to get past any of them.
Safety checks in the code
- Polling profiles of about 5, 3 or 1.5 minutes with ±40–50% jitter, plus a per-account daily request cap (
packages/shared/src/safety.ts).
- The local agent looks up its public IP's network and refuses to start on a cloud/datacenter network unless you override it (
apps/agent/src/ip-guard.ts). A login from home followed by requests from a datacenter is a common account-takeover signal, so the part that talks to the site should run where you logged in.
auto mode only books when the new date is earlier by at least N days, at a consulate you allow-listed, after the first N bookings were confirmed by hand, within a per-day cap, with a kill switch and a dry-run mode (packages/shared/src/interlocks.ts). If the site's response is unclear the attempt is marked failed and you are asked to check manually.
Install
Browser extension (recommended)
- Download
visalark-extension-<version>.zip from the latest release (built by CI from the tagged commit) and unzip it, or build it yourself:
pnpm install
pnpm build:packages
pnpm --filter @visa-lark/extension build # output: apps/extension/dist
- Open
chrome://extensions (or edge://extensions), enable Developer mode, click Load unpacked and choose the unzipped folder (or apps/extension/dist if you built it).
- Log in to
ais.usvisa-info.com yourself and open the reschedule page.
- Click the VisaLark icon → Sync session. It reads the consulate and schedule id from the page URL.
- In Settings, add a monitor (consulates, visa type, date window, mode) and at least one notification channel, then click 发送测试通知 / send test. The browser asks for access to the push services you configured; allow it, or the alerts cannot leave the browser. The page shows which channels delivered.
Local agent (runs without a browser open)
For a home PC or Raspberry Pi, not a cloud server:
pnpm install && pnpm build:packages && pnpm --filter @visa-lark/agent build
cp apps/agent/visalark.config.example.json apps/agent/visalark.config.json
# paste the _yatri_session cookie from your logged-in browser, consulate, schedule id and channels
node apps/agent/dist/index.js apps/agent/visalark.config.json
Optional control plane
apps/control-plane is a small Fastify + SQLite service that keeps a history of seen dates (and a heatmap of when slots tend to appear) and can relay notifications. It never receives visa credentials. See apps/control-plane/README.md.
Repository layout
packages/shared scheduling, safety limits, auto-book checks, shared types
packages/adapter-usvisa-info the only code that talks to the visa site
packages/notify Bark, ServerChan, Telegram and webhook channels
apps/extension Manifest V3 extension (vanilla TypeScript + Vite)
apps/agent local Node agent with the residential-IP check
apps/control-plane optional history / relay service
apps/web landing page and mock demo, deployed at visa-lark.vercel.app
DESIGN.md has the threat model and the reasoning behind these choices.
Development
pnpm install
pnpm build:packages # the apps import the built packages
pnpm -r --filter "!@visa-lark/web" test # vitest in every package and app
CI runs the same steps, builds the extension and uploads the zip as an artifact, and typechecks, lints and builds apps/web; pushing a v* tag publishes the extension zip as a GitHub release.
Disclaimer
VisaLark is a personal, non-commercial project and is not affiliated with CGI Federal or the U.S. Department of State. It does not provide a hosted service, holds nobody's credentials and cannot promise you an appointment. Nothing here is legal advice.
Copyright 2026 Weiping Yan. Licensed under Apache-2.0; see also NOTICE.
