+To verify that your repo produces well-formed JSON notifications,
+you can run irkerhook.py in the repo directory using the -n switch,
+which emits JSON to standard output rather than attempting to ship
+to an irkerd instance.
+
+Then, start irkerd and call irkerhook.py while watching the freenode
+#commits channel.
+
+The 'irk' script is a little test tool that takes two arguments,
+a channel and a message, and does what you'd expect.
+
+If you need help, there's a project chat channel at
+
+ irc://chat.freenode.net/#irker
+
+== Read-only access ==
+
+If, for whatever reason, you can't modify the hook scripts in your
+repository, there is still hope.
+
+There's a proxy that takes CIA XML-RPC notifications
+and passes them to a local irker instance. Find it here:
+
+ https://github.com/nenolod/irker-cia-proxy
+
+There's also a poller daemon that can watch activity in a Subversion
+repository and ship notifications via an irker instance.
+
+ https://github.com/shikadilord/irker-svnpoller
+