Runtime configuration of Supybot is handled via the Config plugin.
You can get/set and list all of your configuration variables using
this plugin.  The configuration structure is hierarchical - there is a
base group which contains all of the configuration stuff (which is
simply called "supybot"), and there are subgroups beneath that base
group, some of which contain values (these should be thought of as your
configuration settings).  So, everything in the configuration hierarchy
is a group, but not everything in the hierarchy has an associated value.
Let's take a look at a few examples before we dive into the use of the
Config plugin, just to make sure that the configuration structure is
clear first.

Some of the more important configuration values are located directly
under the base group - things like the bot's nick, it's ident, etc.
Along with these config values are a few subgroups that contain other
values.  Some of the more prominent subgroups are: plugins (where all
the plugin-specific configuration is held), replies, commands, and
directories.  There are other subgroups as well, but these are the ones
we'll use in our example.

Using the Config plugin, you can list the values in a subgroup and get
or set any of the values anywhere in the configuration hierarchy.  For
example, let's say you wanted to see what configuration values were
under the "supybot" (the base group) hierarchy.  You would simply issue
this command:

config list supybot

Which would return a list of things like this:

nick, ident, user, server, password, channels, prefixChars,
defaultCapabilities, ignores, defaultAllow, defaultIgnore,
humanTimestampFormat, externalIP, pipeSyntax,
followIdentificationThroughNickChanges, alwaysJoinOnInvite,
showSimpleSyntax, maxHistoryLength, nickmods, throttleTime,
snarfThrottle, threadAllCommands, httpPeekSize, pingServer,
pingInterval, and flush

These are all the configuration values you can set which are under the
base "supybot" group.  Actually, their full names would each have a
"supybot." appended on to the front of them, but it is omitted in the
listing to shorten the output and it is assumed since you entered in
"supybot" as the group to look under.

Now, to see all of the available configuration groups under the base
"supybot" group, we simply use the "--groups" flag to config list:

config list --groups supybot

Which returns a list of subgroups, like so:

commands, databases, directories, drivers, log, plugins, replies, and
reply

These are all the subgroups of "supybot".  Again, the full name of
these would have "supybot." prepended to them.  So really, we have
supybot.commands, supybot.databases, etc.

Note: an item can show up in both lists if it is a group that itself
has a value.  For example, all plugins fall under this category, as
their value is a boolean value determining whether or not that plugin
is loaded when the bot is started.  

One last listing example, and then we'll start actually reading and
modifying the configuration values.  It's important to know that when
you provide the group argument to config list that you must always
provide the full name of the group.  For example, "config list
commands" would be incorrect, even though we see "commands" in the
listing above.  You must include the full name of the parent group as
well.  In this case, that would be "supybot", so to list everything in
the commands subgroup of supybot, we do:

config list supybot.commands

Which returns:

defaultPlugins

Okay, now that you should have the hang of using the Config plugin to
explore all the configuration variables available to you, let's start
looking at those values.

The first (and perhaps most important) thing you should know about
each configuration variable is that they all have an associated help
string to tell you what they represent.  So the first command we'll
cover is "config help".  To see the help string for any value or
group, simply use "config help <group|value>":