IRC Commands Cheat Sheet

Quick reference for Freenode IRC commands by VM (Vicky) Brasseur, published on Opensource.com. Many open source project communities are hosted on IRC.

Basic Commands

Command	Purpose
/msg NickServ REGISTER password email	Register nickname
/msg NickServ IDENTIFY nick password	Log in
/list	List all channels
/join channelname	Join a channel
/msg nick	Start private message
/me action	Display an action
/away message	Set away status
/quit	Disconnect

Intermediate Commands

• /motd — Display message of the day
• /topic — View/set channel topic
• /who, /whois — User info lookup

Advanced Commands

• Grouping nicknames — /nick then /msg NickServ GROUP
• Registering channels — /msg ChanServ REGISTER channelname
• Channel modes — /mode channel +/-modecode
• User modes — /mode nick +/-modecode

Connection to Vault

IRC remains relevant as a real-time collaboration protocol in open source communities. Related to Terminal Workflow Optimization for developer tooling and the broader theme of developer knowledge management.