How to connect to Twitch with an IRC client (As of Oct 2015)

twitch_irc.md

HOWTO

Connect to Twitch.tv chat with an IRC client

1. Visit this website and get an OAuth Token for your Twitch account.
2. Add a server to your IRC client with this configuration, using your OAuth Token as the server password. Make sure it is not using SSL.

{
  address = "irc.twitch.tv";
  chatnet = "Twitch";
  port = "6667";
  password = "<YOUR OAUTH TOKEN>";
  use_ssl = "no";
  ssl_verify = "no";
  autoconnect = "yes";
}

3. A recent update to Twitch's IRC implementation requires using the IRCv3 "membership" capability in order to subscribe to channel updates. If you don't configure your client to use this capability, you will not see channel members or incoming messages. In order to use the membership capability, your client needs to send this raw command to the IRC server automatically after connecting:

CAP REQ :twitch.tv/membership

In irssi, you can use the autosendcmd configuration on the chatnet with the /quote command.

Twitch = {
  type = "IRC";
  nick = "your_twitch_username";
  autosendcmd = "/quote CAP REQ :twitch.tv/membership";
};

4. Connect to the server and you can now join stream chat rooms. The rooms are titled # followed by the streamer's username in lowercase. So if your name was StreamLord you would want to join #streamlord. You may have issues receiving channel updates if you use capitalized variants.