IRCd in Pure Bash
Details
- External ID
- 45766132
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- IRCd in Pure Bash
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Oct. 30, 2025
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 6
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.3018867924528302
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45755788 there was mention of an IRC server using gawk, but no code. So I wrote an IRCd in pure bash.
Enrichment
- Theme
- developer tools for AI agents
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- irc server in bash
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Implementing a functional multi-client IRC daemon entirely in pure Bash requires deep knowledge of Unix pseudodevices (/dev/tcp), raw socket emulation, file descriptor multiplexing, and IRC RFC specifications under extreme shell constraints.
What it would actually take: The program must handle concurrent TCP client connections using Bash's built-in `/dev/tcp/host/port` file descriptors or netcat wrappers without crashing the shell environment. It requires building an event loop or process-forking mechanism to handle asynchronous I/O, managing state tables (channels, nicknames, permissions) in Bash associative arrays, and strictly adhering to IRC RFC 1459 / 2812 protocols. This is a technical tour-de-force requiring esoteric Unix internals and bash plumbing expertise.
Discussion
1 comment analyzed.
Concerns raised: Whether it has AI capabilities
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 32 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #22 of 33 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Looks like the first mover among its competitors.
- WooTTY · hn · 2026-03-04 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- Grsh · hn · 2026-01-14 · 50 upvotes · similarity 0.36
- Claude Code rewritten as a bash script · hn · 2026-03-31 · 62 upvotes · similarity 0.36
- Please hack my C webserver (it's a collaborative whiteboard) · hn · 2026-02-15 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.35
- SSH Quick Commands · ph · 2026-09-25 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.34
- ShellTalk brings deterministic text-to-bash · hn · 2026-04-22 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.34
- Docs over SSH for Agents · hn · 2026-04-01 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.34
- Syq · hn · 2026-09-10 · 41 upvotes · similarity 0.34
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a dev tools tool for Sales yet.