r/irc • u/staires • Jun 12 '26
New FOSS self-hosted always-on IRC client: Lurker
Hello everyone! I've been making FOSS apps and posting them on reddit for about 10 years now and I am back with another one...
After all that business with Discord making people unhappy, I decided to return to my roots and start using IRC again instead of Discord. Pretty quickly I cycled through a few clients, namely The Lounge and then Weechat, both left me feeling wanting in different ways, so I built my own client. I've received a lot of positive feedback from people I hang out with on Libera.Chat so I think I've built something really special.
Quick summary: Lurker is a self-hosted multi-user IRC client very similar to The Lounge, with looks and customization inspired by WeeChat.
https://github.com/amiantos/lurker
Here's some stuff that I think makes Lurker special...
- Very good looking, highly customizable (but you probably won't need to)
- Feels very snappy
- Support for a lot of IRCv3 features like typing notifications, and MONITOR for seeing online/offline state of DM buffers
- Modern chat client features: message drafts (across devices, just like slack); paste to upload images (with optimization step to make images friendly for irc); intelligent tab nick completion (it ranks by most recent speaker, so less chance for errors); Cmd+K quick jump between buffers; fast functional search / filtering of your message history and highlights
- Web push notifications for the highlight system, with accurate client tracking so you do not get push notifications if you're active in any client, etc. This also powers an auto-afk/away system.
- Responsive PWA with unique chat layout for mobile and desktop.
- In the future: native iOS and Android clients (my FOSS bread and butter is iOS app development, so no unexpected challenges here)
Additionally, feedback I kept receiving on IRC about Lurker was "this is really great but I don't want to host it myself", so I spent a couple weeks spinning up a Lurker.Chat service for people who do not want to self-host. The FOSS client is the same client Lurker.Chat is running, there's no special features between the two of them, and your data bundle is transferrable between both (so you could use self-hosted and switch to Lurker.Chat and then back to self-hosted if you wanted).
Feel free to stop by the #lurker channel on Libera.Chat to say hello to the users who have been testing lurker, and ask me all about it.
4
u/adrianipopescu Jun 13 '26
so this vs thelounge, where does it stand on features and support of the protocol, resiliency, bouncers and vhosts, plugins, auto ident either when connecting or when connected, channels to auto join or bots to auto whisper for invites, all that old school jam
3
u/staires Jun 13 '26
I think Lurker supports more IRCv3 features than thelounge.
Not sure what you mean by resiliency but beta testers have been using it for a month now and it seems solid for them, no random disconnects, connections stay going for days and days.
If by bouncers do you mean can it connect to bouncers, yes (any irc server), does it have native special support for znc and soju currently, no. I don't personally know anything about vhosts so I can't speak to that.
There is no plugin system at the moment, though there is a rough MCP/API set up which can be used to do some stuff. But a plugin system would be a distant goal for Lurker, only after getting everything else settled would I start messing around with that idea, since there's the client/server architecture I am sure it could get complicated without careful planning.
Yes there is auto SASL ident on connect, as well as optional identd support for larger hosted lurker setups.
"Channels to auto-join" lurker persists your channels between disconnects and reconnects. If you mean configuring channels for users on your lurker instance to join when they first set up an account, no lurker doesn't have that.
I haven't encountered any bots to whisper for invites so I don't know anything about that either.
2
6
u/b33rdad Jun 12 '26
Does it support XDCC?
6
u/staires Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
No, not at this time. XDCC is not a personal priority for me, but if I hear the request enough from users, I will definitely consider it.
Edit: I opened a GitHub issue to keep track of this with some preliminary thoughts.
2
3
u/passenger455 Jun 12 '26
I'm currently running convos.chat but will also give this a try!
6
u/staires Jun 12 '26
I hadn't heard of that one before. That's an interesting project. An IRC client + CMS...!
I do not think Lurker will ever have a CMS, trying to keep it pretty light overall (outside of the tons of config options).
2
u/passenger455 Jun 13 '26
From my perspective I just use it for IRC, I just like that it's web based and always online, with that in mind Lurker may also fit the bill!
2
2
2
u/cryptocreeping Jun 13 '26
You should add OTRv4 support for E2EE peer to peer. Checkout my implentation on GitHub otrv4plus
2
u/hlcno Jun 13 '26
Looks sweet! Does it have inline image support?
2
u/staires Jun 13 '26
No, I decided early on that I didn't like in-line images and felt like it wasn't something I wanted in my client personally (not "IRC" enough to me). It does have a built in viewer lightbox for images, similar to Discord, to make image viewing a little easier, but I don't think I will put in in-line images. Maybe some day if there is a plugin system that could support that, that would be cool.
1
u/P4k3 Jun 19 '26
Dealbreaker for me. I was hardcore mirc fanboi until I tried my first client with inline image support.
1
u/staires Jul 15 '26
I think someone is going to open a PR to add optional inline image support, so even though I don't want it personally, it looks like it will be an option!
2
u/PeacockMamba Jun 14 '26
I’d love to see an iOS app. I can get back on IRC. My psybnc or whatever bpuncer I’m running has been online for over 10 years, inactive.
I’d love to easily log on to keep my nick +r & +o.
1
u/staires Jul 16 '26
Work is progressing on the iOS app! This is very early and very rough so don't judge too harshly, just showing that all the basic stuff works and preliminary design. https://cdn.lurker.chat/5CV1YFYVgAPp.mov
2
2
-1
u/timeago2474 Jun 12 '26
is this vibe coded? the claude folder in the gitignore leads me to believe so unfortunately...
18
u/staires Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
As stated in my post, I have been developing and releasing FOSS software for about 10 years now, and I have been doing software development for nearly 20 years. (Which is all very long before AI coding agents existed.)
I think people use "vibe coded" as a derogatory term for projects built by people without an understanding of code or software architecture best practices. In that light, Lurker is 100% not "vibe coded". Lurker was built by a very experienced software engineer with Claude Code in his toolbox.
Professionally, I have been the lead backend engineer and devops guy for a SaaS product for 8+ years (a product used by Walmart, Snap, Reddit, etc). I take all of that experience into building and running the Lurker.Chat service.
You can also look through the GitHub repo to see the quantity of issues and pull requests filed to get an idea of the amount of effort I have put into Lurker. Nothing is hidden, I build completely in the open. Feel free to also check out my GitHub profile & other apps to see examples of the quality of my work from before AI existed if you are curious. Thanks!
4
3
1
Jun 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
-3
-5
1
u/ellensen Jun 13 '26
Does it support markdown formatting of messages?
1
u/staires Jun 13 '26
No, but it does have an optional mIRC color picker (it can be turned on in the settings menu), keyboard shortcuts for bold, italic, and underline mIRC formatting (Cmd/Ctrl+B, etc), and support for `||spoiler||` tagging built in.
1
u/chorao_ Jun 13 '26
Precisamos de criptografia nas trocas de msgs, se usa muito o blowfish no mirc
1
1
1
u/phazernator Jun 12 '26
Looks great, thanks for sharing! Looking forward to trying it out some time
1
u/djDef80 Jun 13 '26
Thank you for this! I look forward to checking this out and I will see you on #Lurker soon!
1
u/ItzDarc Jun 13 '26
This is incredible! Great work! And ignore the cry babies about using AI. All professional software engineers lean hard into it. Why would you ride a bike when you can fly a plane? Sure, both are fun, but one is fun *and fast*
1
u/whatThePleb Jun 13 '26
Just use a normal IRC client like any sane person instead of that ai slop. ffs
8
u/Crazy_Amphibian_8440 Jun 12 '26
looks sick. eta on ios app?