Irssi – a modular text mode chat client
irssi.org
irssi.org
Irssi has incredible UX, features, extensibility with scripts (this is a big one, go2.pl is a killer feature for me). I also like that I can create aliases doing all sorts of things, like PMing a specific bot, giving me shorthand if I need to set a bunch of reminders or run wolfram alpha queries or YouTube searches. You can also run shell commands and send the output as a message, and these can be made into convenient aliases. Suddenly I can type /fig before some text to spit out the figlet output.
One thing that feels minor/obvious that most modern stuff is missing is having ordered numbered chats, and preserving that order but also letting you rearrange it. I remember the numbers for frequently used channels and can jump to them with about two key-strokes, e.g. esc-5. This lets you develop muscle memory and something like a spatial awareness of the chats. New stuff is like a hellish fever dream where if you close your eyes for a second, you're screwed. Everything is ordered by recency or activity and constantly jumping around. The room list only brings me stress in my Matrix clients. Meanwhile with irssi I can have my second monitor off because I was watching something immersive and pause for a second to quick send something to a certain IRC channel or person without looking and near 100% success rate. Jump to my named remote tmux terminal window with my Sway keybind, C-b 1 for the tmux window with irssi, my friend I talk to a lot is my 6th window so I hit esc-6, if it was already on that chat it gracefully does nothing (unlike weechat by default), I write my quick message, hit enter, jump back to mpv with another Sway keybind and continue watching. I simply don't trust gajim or nheko UX enough to do something similar with them. Irssi never lets me down.