Yesterday I had a chat with @faidon about this project and this is what I gathered:

• we currently run a patched ircd daemon on kraz (role::mw_rc_irc in site.pp) that serves irc.wikimedia.org
• bots join channels (like #enwiki, etc..) and listen for updates from rc-pmtpa, like recent changes feed, and take actions accordingly. There are ~264 clients using irc.wikimedia.org.

Outstanding issues:

• kraz runs Debian Jessie, so it needs to be upgraded to Stretch/Buster during the next months before Jessie's LTS deadline expires.
• maintaining a patched ircd daemon is cumbersome and not scalable

Proposal from Faidon:

• write a custom stateless daemon to run on Kubernetes based on https://gist.github.com/paravoid/3419e0b5ae1f24b6ea21906a142f2f47
• the daemon should be stateless and not sharing state
• the daemon should offer a "sandbox" to each client/bot joining, offering a "private"-like IRC channel with only rc-pmtpa writing updates. In this way running the daemon on multiple pods in kubernetes wouldn't require to share state (like the list of connected clients, etc..)
• the daemon should pull recentchanges from Event Streams, and feeding it to every channel/client.

The above is not mandatory but only a suggestion about how to proceed :)