Quickstart¶

You'll have a working script in about five minutes. By the end you'll know how to create, edit, and hot-reload a script without ever restarting Cascade.

1. Open the Scripts panel¶

In the Cascade menu bar, go to Settings → Scripts. This is where you create and monitor scripts. For a full tour of the panel's controls, see Managing scripts.

2. Create a script¶

In the Scripts panel, type greeter in the name field and click New script. Cascade creates a greeter/ directory inside the scripts folder, scaffolds a starter greeter.go file, and reveals it in the panel.

To find the file on disk, click Open scripts folder (macOS: Reveal in Finder; Windows/Linux: Reveal in folder).

3. Edit the script¶

Open greeter/greeter.go in any text editor and replace its entire contents with the following:

package main

// cascade:name greeter
// cascade:description Replies "hello!" when someone says !hi

import "github.com/matt0x6f/irc-client/cascade"

func OnText(e cascade.TextEvent) {
    if e.HasPrefix("!hi") {
        e.Reply("hello, " + e.Nick + "!")
    }
}

The comment header declares the script's display name and description. The OnText handler fires whenever a message arrives in any channel you're watching.

4. Save — Cascade hot-reloads automatically¶

Save the file. Cascade detects the change and reloads the script immediately, with no restart required. Within a second or two the Scripts panel shows the script's status badge as Loaded.

5. Try it¶

In any channel where you're present, type !hi. You should see Cascade reply with:

hello, <yournick>!

That's your first live, running script.

If it didn't load¶

If the status badge shows Error instead of Loaded, click the badge to expand the error message. A typo in a function signature or an unrecognized import is the most common cause. Fix it, save again, and Cascade hot-reloads once more.

For a detailed look at the load/reload/unload lifecycle and what the watchdog does when a script misbehaves, see Lifecycle & limits. For help reading error messages and managing individual scripts from the UI, see Managing scripts.

Next: Writing scripts — handlers, timers, the manifest header, and the full sandbox rules.