IRC Protocol

Repartee implements comprehensive IRC protocol support covering RFC 2812 and a wide range of IRCv3 extensions, all negotiated automatically at connection time.

Core Protocol

The core IRC layer handles all standard protocol operations defined in RFC 2812:

• Connection registration -- NICK, USER, PASS, and capability negotiation
• Channel operations -- JOIN, PART, KICK, INVITE, TOPIC, MODE, ban lists
• Messaging -- PRIVMSG, NOTICE to channels and users
• Server queries -- MOTD, LUSERS, VERSION, STATS, INFO, ADMIN, TIME, LINKS
• User queries -- WHO, WHOIS, WHOWAS, NAMES, LIST
• CTCP -- VERSION, PING, TIME, ACTION, and custom CTCP queries

IRCv3 Capabilities

Repartee negotiates IRCv3 capabilities during connection via CAP LS/REQ/ACK. The following capabilities are requested when the server supports them:

SASL Authentication

Repartee supports three SASL mechanisms for authenticating with IRC services:

• PLAIN -- username and password authentication
• EXTERNAL -- client certificate-based authentication
• SCRAM-SHA-256 -- challenge-response authentication with no plaintext password transmission

WHOX Support

WHOX (extended WHO) is auto-detected when the server advertises it via ISUPPORT. Repartee uses WHOX queries to populate account names and full user@host information for nick entries, providing richer user data in the nick list and enabling account-based features like extbans.

Extban

Repartee supports the $a:account extended ban type, which bans users by their services account name rather than by hostmask. This is more reliable than hostmask bans since accounts persist across reconnections and host changes.

Use the /ban -a shorthand to quickly set an account-based ban on a user in the current channel.

DCC CHAT

Repartee supports direct peer-to-peer chat connections via the DCC CHAT protocol:

• Active and passive modes -- initiate direct connections or use reverse (passive) DCC for users behind NAT
• =nick buffer convention -- DCC chats appear as =Alice in the buffer list, matching irssi behavior
• Auto IP detection -- from the IRC socket, with manual override via /set dcc.own_ip
• Auto-accept masks -- configure trusted hostmasks to automatically accept DCC requests
• Tab-completable commands -- /dcc chat, /dcc close, /dcc list, /dcc reject

Flood Protection

Repartee includes built-in flood protection to prevent being disconnected for sending too many messages too quickly. Outgoing messages are rate-limited to comply with server-side flood thresholds, with automatic queuing and draining.

Netsplit Detection

Netsplit events (server-to-server link failures) are automatically detected and displayed as collapsed, human-readable summaries rather than flooding your channel with individual QUIT and JOIN messages. This uses the IRCv3 batch capability when available, with pattern-based heuristic detection as a fallback.

Multi-Network Support

Repartee supports connecting to multiple IRC networks simultaneously. Add multiple [servers.*] sections to your config file and each network gets its own connection, set of channel buffers, and independent state. All connections share a single event loop for efficient resource usage.