senpai(5) File Formats Manual senpai(5)

senpai - Configuration file format and settings

A senpai configuration file is a scfg file. See https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/scfg.

Some settings are required, the others are optional.

address (required)

The address (host[:port]) of the IRC server. senpai uses TLS connections by default unless you specify 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.

nickname (required)

Your nickname, sent with a NICK IRC message. It mustn't contain spaces or colons (:).

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.

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.

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.

on-highlight-path

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:

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.

Environment variable Description
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
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")"

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.

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
}
Sub-directive Description
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
nicks [...] color scheme for user nicks, see table below
status sub-directive Description
status <color> show status events with the specified color
status disabled hide status events
nicks sub-directive Description
nicks base show nicks with 16 different colors (default)
nicks extended show nicks with 256 different colors
nicks fixed [<others> [self]] show nicks with a fixed color, optionally specifying the colors for other nicks, and self

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).

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

address irc.libera.chat
nickname Guest123456

A more advanced configuration file that enables SASL authentication, fetches the password from an external program instead of storing in plaintext, sends notifications on highlight and decreases the width of the nick column to 12 (note: swaymsg is specific to sway, a wayland compositor. Use whatever you need to know if the terminal emulator that runs senpai has focus):

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"
highlight guest senpai
highlight lenon # don't know why you'd split it into multiple lines, but you can if you want
pane-widths {
	nicknames 12
}

And the highlight file (~/.config/senpai/highlight):

#!/bin/sh
escape() {
	printf "%s" "$1" | sed 's#\#\\#g'
}
FOCUS=$(swaymsg -t get_tree | jq '..|objects|select(.focused==true)|.name' | grep senpai | wc -l)
if [ "$HERE" -eq 0 ] || [ $FOCUS -eq 0 ]; then
	notify-send "[$BUFFER] $SENDER" "$(escape "$MESSAGE")"
fi

senpai(1)

2023-11-27