IRK(1)

📦
version 2.25 · 7 versions
, in arch rolling

💅 IRK — like, section 1 of the irker manual, bestie 🎀

okay so real quick: this is IRK(1), and no cap it's the silliest little program in the whole irker family. she's a tester, she's a vibe, she's not here to be your production tool. let's go ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

irk — the test program for irkerd, periodt 💖

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

irk [target] [message text]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

irk is a simple little test program for irkerd(8) — think of her as the designated guinea pig 🐹. what she does is literally this: she builds a simple JSON object, and then she passes it straight to the daemon that's running on localhost. that's it. that's the whole job. iconic, honestly 👑

🌈 OPTIONS 🌈

irk takes the following options, and yes there are only two, we love a low-maintenance queen:

  • target — which server and channel to join to announce the message 💬. if it's not already prefixed with irc:, she'll slap irc://chat.freenode.net/ on the front of the argument before passing it directly to irkerd. this argument is what gets passed as the "to" parameter in the JSON object, iykyk.
  • message — which message to send to the target you specified above 📨. cute lil trick: if the string is exactly -, then the message gets read from standard input, with newlines stripped. yes, she'll eat your stdin. she's hungry 🍓

💀 LIMITATIONS 💀

okay bestie, sit down, we need to talk about the flaws 😭:

  • irk has no commandline usage and may be riddled with bugs. not "might have a bug," like — riddled. it's giving haunted house 🙈
  • irk doesn't know how to talk to your favorite VCS. she simply refuses to learn. you will generally want to use irkerhook(1) instead 🫶
  • irk has also all the limitations of irkerd. so whatever irkerd can't do? she can't do it either. trauma bonding fr fr 💜

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

irkerhook(1),

(yes that's the whole list. she's a minimalist 💅)

🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> — king behavior honestly 👑. see the project page at http://www.catb.org/~esr/irker for updates and other resources, including an installable repository hook script. go look, it's cute, I promise 🧚

💖 anyway that's the whole page! no secrets, no cap, she's just a tiny test program with big main character energy. use irkerhook(1) for real work, use irk for vibes ✨

and that's a wrap on this irker page, dated 07/26/2026 — mwah, bye bestie! 🎀💖🔥

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