What is Kaero?

Kaero is a lightweight and cozy terminal-based IRC client made in Golang. In Japanese, kaero 帰る means "to return (home)" which I find poetic for an IRC client. The name is also phonetically similar to kaeru かえる which means "frog" (thus the logo).

Features

These features are currently supported.

• 125 server replies (out of ~150 well known numerics) implemented
• 31 user commands implemented
• Can join up to 9 channels in one server network
• SSL/TLS support
• UTF-8 with full-width characters
• File-based configuration

Not supported

These features are not supported yet but may be implemented in the future.

• User prefixes
• Channel prefixes
• Customizable colors
• Customizable keybinds
• Highlight mentions
• Timestamps in logs
• Direct messages
• CTCP
• DCC
• IRCv3
• CAP negotiations
• Identity registration
• User list as a side panel
• Multi-network support

Keybinds

• Ctrl + C: quit the application
• Enter: toggle the input bar, or send message is non-empty
• Alt + [0-9]: swap between channels
• PgUp / PgDown: scroll through the chat log

Commands

• /ping
• /quit [<reason>]
• /nick <nickname>
• /oper <name> <password>
• /motd [<target>]
• /version [<target>]
• /admin [<target>]
• /connect <target server> [<port> [<remote server>]]
• /lusers
• /time [<server>]
• /stats <query> [<server>]
• /help [<subject>]
• /info
• /join <channel>{,<channel>} [<key>{,<key>}]
• /part <channel>{,<channel>} [<reason>] (alias: /leave ...)
• /topic <channel> [<topic>]
• /names <channel>{,<channel>}
• /list [<channel>{,<channel>}] [<elistcond>{,<elistcond>}]
• /invite <nickname> <channel>
• /kick <channel> <user> *( "," <user> ) [<comment>]
• /who <mask>
• /whois [<target>] <nick>
• /whowas <nick> [<count>]
• /kill <nickname> <comment>
• /rehash
• /restart
• /squit <server> <comment>
• /away [<text>]
• /links
• /userhost <nickname>{ <nickname>}
• /wallops <text>

Config file

Kaero expects a config file named config.json located at the root of the executable.

Here's an example config:

{
    "servers": [
        {
            "host": "irc.libera.chat",
            "port": 6697,
            "ssl": true,
            "nick": "myName",
            "username": "myName",
            "realName": "myName",
            "defaultChannels": [
                "#libera"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

How to run?

I am not currently publishing binaries, so they need to be built manually.

1. Clone the repository.

   git clone https://github.com/bourgeoisor/kaero
   cd kaero/

2. Fetch the required dependencies and build the binary.

   go get
   go build

3. Run the binary.

   ./kaero