senpai(5)

📦
version 0.5.0 · 7 versions
, in alpine 3.24

🎀 senpai(5) — File Formats Manual 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

senpai — Configuration file format and settings. 💖

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so a senpai configuration file is a scfg file. See https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/scfg. Some settings are required, the others are optional — yes bestie, you gotta clock which is which. 🫶

💅 SETTINGS 💅

  • address (required) — The address (host[:port]) of the IRC server. senpai uses TLS connections by default unless you specify the tls option to be false. TLS connections default to port 6697, plain-text use port 6667.

An optional scheme can be specified (scheme://host[:port]):

  • irc:// is the implicit default, TLS is enabled or disabled according to the tls configuration value.
  • ircs:// enables TLS.
  • irc+insecure:// disables TLS (plain-text IRC).
  • ircs+insecure:// enables TLS but skips TLS certificate verification. This protects against passive MITM attacks but not against active MITM attacks. So like, it's not a full shield, bestie — know the difference.
  • nickname (required) — Your nickname, sent with a NICK IRC message. It mustn't contain spaces or colons (:). No cap, that's literally the rule. 💅
  • realname — Your real name, or actually just a field that will be available to others and may contain spaces and colons. Sent with the USER IRC message. By default, the value of nick is used.
  • username — Your username, sent with the USER IRC message and also used for SASL authentication. By default, the value of nick is used.
  • password — Your password, used for SASL authentication. See also password-cmd.
  • password-cmd command [arguments...] — Alternatively to providing your SASL authentication password directly in plaintext, you can specify a command to be run to fetch the password at runtime. This is useful if you store your passwords in a separate (probably encrypted) file using gpg or a command line password manager such as pass or gopass. If a password-cmd is provided, the value of password will be ignored and the first line of the output of password-cmd will be used for login.

The command and arguments are already quoted by scfg, so there is no need to additionally quote the whole command string. For example:

password-cmd pass "Messaging/irc"
  • channel — A space separated list of channel names that senpai will automatically join at startup and server reconnect. This directive can be specified multiple times.

This directive should not be used when using a bouncer, as the bouncer already remembers and joins senpai to its saved channels automatically. iykyk — don't double up, bestie.

  • highlight — A space separated list of keywords that will trigger a notification and a display indicator when said by others. This directive can be specified multiple times.

By default, senpai will use your current nickname.

  • on-highlight-beep — Enable sending the bell character (BEL) when you are highlighted. Defaults to disabled.
  • pane-widths { ... } — Configure the width of various UI panes.

Pane widths are set as sub-directives of the main pane-widths directive:

pane-widths {
    nicknames 16
}

This directive supports the following sub-directives:

  • nicknames — The number of cells that the column for nicknames occupies in the timeline. By default, 14.
  • channels — The number of cells that the column for channels occupies on screen. By default, 16. Use special value 0 to make the channel list horizontal. If the value is negative, the channel list will be horizontal by default and will take the positive (opposite) width value when toggled with F7.
  • members — The number of cells that that the column for the list of channel members occupies on screen. By default, 16. Use special value 0 to disable. If the value is negative, the member list will be disabled by default and will take the positive (opposite) width value when toggled with F8.
  • text — The maximum message text line width for messages, in number of cells. By default, the value is zero, which means that there is no maximum. Useful for keeping a readable line width on large screens.
  • tls — Enable TLS encryption. Defaults to true.
  • typings — Send typing notifications which let others know when you are typing a message. Defaults to true.
  • mouse — Enable or disable mouse support. Defaults to true.
  • spell-check — Enable spell checking using harper-ls. Requires harper-ls to be installed. English only for now. Defaults to false.
  • colors { ... } — Settings for colors of different UI elements.

Colors can be set either by name ("red"), by number (from 0 to 255, for the default 256 terminal colors; -1 meaning default), or by RGB hex true color (#rrggbb).

Colors are set as sub-directives of the main colors directive:

colors {
    prompt green
}
  • prompt <color> — color for ">"-prompt that appears in command mode
  • unread <color> — foreground color for unread buffer names in buffer lists
  • status [...] — foreground color for status event lines (e.g. join, part, nick changes) in buffers, see table below
    • status <color> — show status events with the specified color
    • status disabled — hide status events
  • nicks [...] — color scheme for user nicks, see table below
    • nicks base — show nicks with 16 different colors (default)
    • nicks extended — show nicks with 256 different colors
    • nicks fixed [<others>] — show nicks with a fixed color, optionally specifying the colors for other nicks
    • nicks self <self> — show self nick with a fixed specified color (can be added along other directives)
  • shortcuts { ... } — Settings for custom keyboard shortcuts.

Shortcuts are defined by <key> <action> [<params>...] subdirectives:

shortcuts {
    Alt+k cursor-delete-after
    Shift+Alt+Page_Up set-editor "/me slaps OP with a large trout"
}

Keys are optional modifiers (Control/Shift/Alt/Super) and a key name, which can either be a literal character (e.g. k) or a name for that key, taken from the XKB key names (on Linux, see wev for finding key names, e.g. Page_Up, XF86AudioPlay).

A custom shortcut will override any default shortcut for that key. So yeah — your custom keybind ate, periodt.

okay bestie, before we get into the actual settings — here's the whole entire menu of actions you can glue onto a key. this is the good stuff. every single one, no gatekeeping 💅

  • none — clears the shortcut, no action. literally does nothing, iconically.
  • quit — clear the editor, or type /quit
  • set-editor <text> — set the editor to the passed text, if empty
  • cursor-start — move the cursor to the beginning of the editor
  • cursor-end — move the cursor to the end of the editor
  • redraw — refresh the window
  • scroll-up — go up in the timeline
  • scroll-down — go down in the timeline
  • scroll-next-highlight — go down to the next highlight
  • scroll-previous-highlight — go up to the next highlight
  • buffer-next — go to the next buffer
  • buffer-previous — go to the previous buffer
  • buffer-next-unread — go to the next unread buffer
  • buffer-previous-unread — go to the previous unread buffer

now the cursor squad, aka the ones you'll bind to Ctrl-something and never think about again 🫶

  • cursor-right-word — move the cursor to the next word
  • cursor-left-word — move the cursor to the previous word
  • cursor-right — move the cursor to the next character
  • cursor-left — move the cursor to the previous character
  • cursor-up — scroll back one line in the editor
  • cursor-down — scroll forward one line in the editor
  • cursor-delete-previous-word — delete the previous word in the editor
  • cursor-delete-next-word — delete the next word in the editor
  • cursor-delete-previous — delete the previous character in the editor
  • cursor-delete-next — delete the next character in the editor
  • cursor-delete-before — delete from the cursor to the beginning of the line
  • cursor-delete-after — delete from the cursor to the end of the line
  • search-editor — reverse-search in the editor history. going back in time but for your own messages 🕰️
  • auto-complete — open/select the auto-completion dialog/item
  • close-overlay — close any open overlay buffer (e.g. search results)
  • toggle-channel-list — show/hide the vertical channel list
  • toggle-member-list — show/hide the vertical member list
  • send — send the contents of the editor
  • buffer <number>|last — go the 0-indexed numbered buffer, or the last one
ok real talk, that 0-indexed thing? yes, counting starts at zero. she's a programmer, she's not gonna pretend otherwise 💀

and back to the settings, two advanced ones left, both super chill by default:

  • debug — Advanced. Dump all sent and received data to the home buffer, useful for debugging. Defaults to false.
  • transient — Advanced. Run an ephemeral instance without disk reads/writes (except for the initial configuration). Can be useful for public instances. Defaults to false.
ngl, transient is giving main character who refuses to leave a trace — perfect for when you're hopping on a public instance and don't wanna leave footprints ✨
  • local-integrations — Advanced. Enables integrations with the local system (e.g. notifications through DBus). Can be useful to disable on systems planned to be used through SSH. Defaults to true.
  • on-highlight-path — Advanced. senpai will notify you by default without the need for a custom highlight script. This is an alternative path to a shell script to be executed when you are highlighted. By default, senpai looks for a highlight shell script at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/senpai/highlight. If no file is found at that path, and an alternate path is not provided, highlight command execution is disabled.

If unset, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME defaults to ~/.config/.

Before the highlight script is executed, the following environment variables are populated:

  • BUFFER — buffer where the message appeared
  • HERE — equals 1 if BUFFER is the current buffer, 0 otherwise
  • MESSAGE — content of the message
  • SENDER — nickname of the sender
Shell scripts MUST ENSURE VARIABLES appear QUOTED in the script file, OR YOU WILL BE OPEN TO SHELL INJECTION ATTACKS. Shell scripts must also ensure characters like '*' and '?' are not expanded. 💀

Note: when passing those to notify-send(1), some notification daemons use \ for escape sequences in the body, which causes \ to disappear from the message or triggers unintended side-effects (like newlines).

To get around this, you can double the backslash with the following snippet:

#!/bin/sh
escape() {
     printf "%s" "$1" | sed 's#\\#\\\\#g'
}

notify-send "[$BUFFER] $SENDER" "$(escape "$MESSAGE")"

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

A minimal configuration file to connect to Libera.Chat as "Guest123456":

address irc.libera.chat
nickname Guest123456

A more advanced configuration file that fetches a password from an external program, changes the width of some panes, and enables more colors for user nicks:

address irc.libera.chat
nickname Guest123456
username senpai
realname "Guest von Lenon"
password-cmd gopass show irc/guest # use your favorite CLI password solution here
channel "#rahxephon"
pane-widths {
     nicknames 10
     channels 16
     members 16
}
colors {
     nicks extended
}
shortcuts {
    Alt+k cursor-delete-after
}

🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

💖 okay that's a wrap on senpai(5), bestie — source/version senpai(5), dated 2026-10-14 — now go make your config absolutely iconic ✨

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