--- /dev/null
+account-notify client capability specification
+----------------------------------------------
+
+Copyright (c) 2010 William Pitcock <nenolod@atheme.org>.
+
+Unlimited redistribution and modification of this document is allowed
+provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice
+remains in tact.
+
+The account-notify client capability allows a client to be notified
+when another client's accountname changes. This capability MUST be
+referred to as 'account-notify' at capability negotiation time.
+
+When enabled, clients will get the ACCOUNT message to designate the
+accountname changes for clients on common channels with them.
+
+The ACCOUNT message is one of the following:
+
+ :nick!user@host ACCOUNT accountname
+
+This message represents that the user identified by nick!user@host has
+logged into a new account. The last parameter is the display name of
+that account.
+
+ :nick!user@host ACCOUNT *
+
+This message represents that the user identified by nick!user@host has
+logged out of their account. As the last parameter is an asterisk, this
+means that an asterisk is not a valid account name (which it is not in P10
+or TS6 or ESVID).
+
+In order to take full advantage of the ACCOUNT message, WHOX must be
+supported by the ircd. In this case, the appropriate strategy to ensuring
+you always have the accountname to display is to do the following:
+
+1) Enable the account-notify capability at capability negotiation time during
+ the login handshake.
+
+2) When joining a channel, query the channel using WHO and ensure that you
+ include the 'a' format token in your WHOX token request. When you get
+ a reply, do appropriate caching.
+
+3) When new users join a channel that your client does not know the accountname
+ for yet, do a WHO query against that client, again including the 'a' format
+ token in your WHOX token request field. When you get a reply, do appropriate
+ caching.
+
+4) When the client receives an ACCOUNT message, update the accountname for the
+ client in question in your accountname cache.