I upvoted this comment because I really like the idea of "I built this because I wanted to". I like the idea of Show HNs as an "I made this thing for me, and not for any other reason". Thanks for posting your project!

> But there are two reasons I didn't go that route:

My biggest issue is that Slack doesn't allow non-paying accounts (I forget what they call the tier - "guest" account or something) to use the IRC gateway.

There's one project I'm involved with that moved its support channel from Freenode to Slack. I used to idle in the channel 24/7 thanks to ZNC, and now I have to actually log in through the web interface every time I want to ask a question. It's their loss, too, because I'm also no longer as available to answer other users' questions.

If you run a software project, please, please, do not host your support channel on Slack. I don't want to have to request an invitation just to join the channel, and I don't want to have to either download and open the Slack app or use their web interface[0] just to ask a question or answer other people's questions.

[0] Their web interface has really terrible performance, and last I checked, their Linux "app" was just a webview around said web interface, with equally terrible performance.

2) is a pretty good point actually, maybe slack could integrate that in their backend - basically if the irc client is set as away do not mark read. if not or returns from away, make all buffers read.

Not too hard and would be quite convenient (im not a slack user, but if i become one, id like that in case i log in the webui later..)

Totally understand. My comment was just meant to inform other readers not dissuade you from building awesome apps!

Good on ya son