IRCv3 Downgrades

1st April 2026 by Libera.Chat Staff

Hello Libera.Chat users,

First off, we would like to thank the community for the warm reception our previous post got. We have seen some people express optimism for the future of IRC, and it genuinely warms our hearts that we could contribute to that optimism. We have big plans for Libera.Chat this year, and we can’t wait to be able to share them all with you in due time.

However, our recent feature rollout has been hampered by a major flaw in IRC: client diversity. Clients are free to support or not support any set of IRCv3 features, which means that not everyone using Libera.Chat gets the same experience. In particular, +typing tags are currently only supported by eight IRC clients listed on IRCv3.net: Goguma, Halloy 2026.5+, IRCCloud, mIRC, ObsidianIRC, PIRC.pl, senpai, and Weechat.

We don’t think that’s fair. We don’t believe that users who are stuck using older software that isn’t necessarily chasing the latest trends should be excluded from the experience of being surprised by shiny new features. From its inception, Libera.Chat has been a next-generation IRC network, but we pride ourselves on not leaving anyone behind.

To rectify this, we are currently testing a bot named CompatServ (codenamed pyrite internally) which downgrades IRCv3 TAGMSGs with attached +typing tags into NOTICEs that have sensible behaviour on every IRC client written in the last decade. If you would like to join us in testing it, we have a channel named #libera-pyrite where you can send typing indicators and the bot should downgrade them appropriately. We ask that you only test it using +typing TAGMSGs sent from compliant implementations of the specification. This will help us fine-tune any rate-limiting or batching that needs to be configured in the production version.

We may use this bot for other IRCv3-related compatibility work. For example:

• Downgrading INVITE messages from invite-notify to NOTICEs.
• Sending its own typing messages to channels so that client authors can test their implementations.
• Sending NOTICEs whenever someone in a channel uses /away.
• Sending warnings when the time tag deviates from the bot’s local time by more than one second.
• Echoing the original message referenced by a +reply tag, once those are supported by Libera.Chat.

In production, CompatServ will be joined to every channel. It will bypass any channel modes that prevent it from sending NOTICEs, so the only way to opt out will be to use /ignore. We trust that this will not be an inconvenience. If you would like to use CompatServ in your channels before the global rollout, it can be /invited like other Libera.Chat utility bots.

In the interest of staying organised, please direct all feedback and comments about our plans for supporting legacy software to #libera-pyrite. Thank you.