We hope to leverage IRC v3 for an improved chat protocol, particularly utilizing message-tags (http://ircv3.atheme.org/specification/message-tags-3.2) which allows us to attach metadata to specific messages.
IRC v3 is backwards compatible, so unless you explicitly register a capability (http://ircv3.atheme.org/specification/capability-negotiation-3.1, indicating you can handle message-tags), you will not receive the tags (and messages remain the same). Keep in mind that we plan to deprecate the existing protocols (aka TWITCHCLIENT), but have no ETA when old protocol versions will no longer be supported. Rest assured that we’ll give you plenty of warning (months? years?) before we remove support, so we don’t believe there is any cause for alarm.
Also keep in mind that the IRC v3 message-tag spec expects clients to ignore tags that they aren’t familiar with. This allows us to add new features/tags to our messages without worrying about clients breaking.
As an example of a message with tags to give you something concrete, although the actual protocol hasn’t been determined, it may look like this:
@chansub;turbo;mod;some_key=value;key2=value2 :user!user@user.tmi.twitch.tv PRIVMSG #some_room :hello there
Thoughts?