problem running locally + escaping special characters

[ffd8]

Was trying to help a student use this API – realized that it won't accept/interpret escaped characters (ie sanitized for cURL request)– not a problem if typing directly into the browser URL, but couldn't do it from shell.. So I downloaded, installed, however node wouldn't fire it up, giving the following error when running node .:

node:internal/validators:123
    throw new ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE(name, 'string', value);
    ^

TypeError [ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE]: The "path" argument must be of type string. Received undefined
    at new NodeError (node:internal/errors:278:15)
    at validateString (node:internal/validators:123:11)
    at Object.dirname (node:path:1172:5)
    at Object.<anonymous> (**removed_personal**/Downloads/lyrics.ovh-master/node_modules/youtube-dl/lib/youtube-dl.js:21:73)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1108:14)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1137:10)
    at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:973:32)
    at Function.Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:813:14)
    at Module.require (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:997:19)
    at require (node:internal/modules/cjs/helpers:92:18) {
  code: 'ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE'
}

Somehow this issue with youtube-dl.js comes from the dependency of alltomp3? – which was probably updated in the past year. Any chance you know how to fix this to get it running (testing with v15.4.0), or could imagine a clever way to accept encodeURIComponent() requests in your online API?