IRC Gateway

The IRC adapter in Carina is a stub. Carina does not ship a built-in IRC client. The adapter receives inbound messages from a sidecar bot that forwards them over HTTP and can post replies back via the sidecar.

How it works

IRC server
   |
IRC sidecar bot (e.g. Limnoria, Sopel, irssi-script)
   |  POST /webhooks/irc
   v
Carina (IrcAdapter processes the message, sends reply)
   |
   v  HTTP callback to sidecar
IRC sidecar bot -> IRC server

Setup

1. Configure your IRC sidecar bot to:

   • Forward inbound messages to POST https://your-carina-host/webhooks/irc
   • Accept outbound HTTP callbacks from Carina and post them to the IRC channel.

2. Add to .env:

   IRC_ENABLED=true

3. Start Carina. The IRC adapter will register and accept inbound webhooks at /webhooks/irc.

Inbound payload format

{
  "text": "message text",
  "user": "nick",
  "channel": "#channelname",
  "id": "optional-message-id"
}

Limitations

• No built-in IRC protocol client. A sidecar is required.
• Replies from Carina must be delivered by the sidecar. Carina raises an error if no sidecar is configured for outbound delivery.
• IRC does not have persistent sessions; each message uses the channel name as the conversation ID.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
IRC adapter not enabled	Set IRC_ENABLED=true
IRC adapter is a stub error	Configure the sidecar to handle outbound messages from Carina
Messages not received	Verify the sidecar is posting to /webhooks/irc with the correct payload format