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How to run a command

One line in Twitch chat and it happens in the world, live. Here is how — and how to read the answer when it does not.

Minecraft’s own commands, in chat

If you have played Minecraft you already know these — they are the same commands you would type in the game. Only the first character changes: # here, where the game uses a slash. All of them are free to anyone watching.

#summon cow ~ ~ ~

A cow 🐮 drops into the world, live on stream.

Your message has to start with # — put a word or a space in front of it and nothing happens at all: no reply, no error.

Get it wrong and chat tells you which part. Fix that bit, send it again:

voxelvic #weather raain

voxelvic: wrong syntax: "raain" is not one of [clear rain thunder] here

voxelvic #weather rain

Rain starts falling over everyone’s build. 🌧

Not every command is open and not every value is. Positions are bounded, whether they are measured from the streamer or from the world, and the lists of blocks, mobs and effects are picked rather than complete.

Somebody is going to try to break it anyway. Go on then 😉. That is expected, and mostly it is the point — the chaos is the show. But one viewer can flatten a world faster than everyone else can build it, and a single number in the wrong command takes the server down for the rest of the stream. The limits are the difference between chaos and a black screen.

See every command and what it takes

The live map

The live map shows the world as it stands, with a marker where the streamer is. Use it to see what chat has built, or where your own command landed. New builds show up once the world has been saved, so they can take a moment.

Click any block and the map tells you where it is. Those are the three numbers a command takes as a position:

Block:

x: 12 y: 79 z: -7

#setblock 12 80 -7 gold_block

A gold block lands on top of the block you clicked.

The map’s y is the block you clicked, so add one to build on top of it: 79 becomes 80.

At an exact spot

Use the numbers the map shows, the way the example above does. They name the same block wherever the streamer is.
Near the streamer

Use ~ instead and you need no coordinates at all: ~ ~ ~ is where the streamer stands, ~5 ~ ~ is five blocks east of them, to the right on the map, and ~-5 ~ ~ is five blocks west, to the left. The map shows you what is around them.

Open the live map

Support the stream

Every command is free, for everyone, and a tip does not change that: it buys nothing and unlocks nothing.

If you enjoy the stream and want to help cover what it costs to run, you can still send one — and get a thank-you for it.

Open the tip page

If it does not run

Read chat’s reply first; it is usually the whole answer. When it is not:

A value that looks right and is still refused may be deliberately off the table rather than mistyped. The command’s own page lists what it takes.
Told to wait: most commands have a pause after each run, and the whole chat shares it — someone else’s command can be why yours has to wait.
Told that commands are paused or that one is switched off: that is the streamer, not you. The command’s own page says which.
No answer at all usually means the message never counted as a command — something was in front of the # — or that chat had already answered you moments ago. It answers each person now and then rather than once per message.