I feel like I'm going crazy here. Wee-slack looks exactly like IRC did 20 years ago, except IRC was free. This is madness.
Maybe if IRC people would have been able to evolve the system to add persistent history we wouldn't be where we are now. And no, sshing to a server to run irssi in screen is not, and never was, an acceptable answer.
Not until you wrap it in electron anyway.
hacking up and rebranding an IRCd is a tried and true startup method. Napster, Slack, Discord...