A modern, self-hosted web IRC client — the open-source IRCCloud.
Working iOS push · Slack-grade full-text search · impeccable, dense design.
IRC, but it finally feels like 2026.
🌐 Live preview · 🗺️ Roadmap · ☕ Sponsor
Warning
🚧 Early-stage — building in public. The engine works today: multi-user auth and a full server-side IRC bouncer with encrypted credentials and 59 passing tests. The end-user chat UI is the next milestone. bool is not yet something you can host as a daily driver — but the foundation is real and the design is done. Star it and follow along. ⭐
Self-hosting your IRC life today means The Lounge — a great project that loses people on three specific things. bool is aimed squarely at those:
| The pain | bool's answer |
|---|---|
| 📵 No real iOS push | An always-on bouncer + PWA built for working push notifications on iOS, not just desktop. |
| 🔍 Weak search | Slack-grade full-text search (SQLite FTS5) over your entire history, with in: / from: / has: filters. |
| 😖 Wastes space / CSS-hacking for density | Compact-by-default with a real, one-click density toggle. Density is a first-class feature, not a hack. |
Add a Cmd-K command palette, self-documenting slash commands, rich media, reactions/replies/typing (with graceful IRC degradation), and a genuinely beautiful multi-theme interface — and IRC starts to feel like a premium modern chat app, while staying 100% yours.
Positioning: an open-source IRCCloud for self-hosted communities — one admin hosts many users, with per-user isolation (think soju, but web-first and pretty).
Design/UX quality is the #1 priority of this project, so it came first. These are interactive mockups (dark + light, live density toggle) — the shipping UI is Milestone 5. Explore them all on the live preview site.
| Terminal-Modern (default) | Soft-Editorial |
|---|---|
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| Neo-Aurora | Shimmer |
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| Cmd-K command palette | Global search |
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Mockups, not shipping UI. One component system, multiple first-party skins — driven by CSS variables.
Working today ✅
- 🔐 Multi-user auth (username + password, sessions, admin panel) via Better Auth
- 📡 Server-side IRC bouncer — IRCv3 caps, SASL,
echo-message, auto-reconnect (built on irc-framework) - 🔒 SASL/network credentials encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM)
- 🧵 Session-gated typed WebSocket protocol (types + zod, shared client/server)
- 🧪 59 passing tests, per-worker DB isolation, clean typecheck
On the roadmap 🔜
- 🗄️ Persistent history + full-text search (SQLite FTS5)
- 📱 iOS push via installable PWA
- 💬 Full chat UI — the four themes above, Cmd-K palette, slash commands
- 🖼️ Rich media, reactions, replies, typing indicators
- 🔁 Multi-device sync + read-state
- 🖥️ Optional Electron desktop wrapper
bool is a pnpm workspace monorepo. It is a stateful, always-on, private real-time app — deliberately not Next.js.
packages/
shared/ Typed WebSocket protocol — TypeScript types + zod schemas
server/ Fastify always-on bouncer — Better Auth · IRC engine · WS gateway · SQLite
client/ Vite + React 19 SPA / PWA — typed WS client, auth UI
Stack: TypeScript · React 19 + Vite (PWA) · Fastify · irc-framework · better-sqlite3 + FTS5 · Better Auth · Zustand · react-virtuoso.
Requires Node ≥ 20 and pnpm. This runs the current dev build (engine + auth UI); there's no full chat UI yet.
git clone https://github.com/dmfarcas/bool.git
cd bool
pnpm install
pnpm dev # server + client in parallelOther scripts:
pnpm -r test # all package tests
pnpm typecheck # typecheck the whole workspace
pnpm --filter @bool/server db:migrate # run migrations manuallyThe server runs migrations automatically before starting, so a fresh deploy needs no manual DB step.
Built milestone by milestone, each with its own design spec + plan (see docs/).
- M0 — Foundation (monorepo, shared protocol, WS skeleton)
- M1 — Auth + admin (Better Auth, sessions, session-gated WS)
- M2 — IRC engine (bouncer core, IRCv3/SASL, encrypted secrets)
- M3 — History + full-text search (FTS5, retention)
- M4 — Sync gateway + read-state (multi-device fan-out)
- M5 — Client UI core (the themes above, Cmd-K palette)
- M6 — Rich features (media, reactions, replies, typing)
- M7 — Push / PWA (working iOS push)
- M8 — Electron desktop wrapper
Contributions, ideas, and bug reports are very welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md. Big changes? Open an issue first so we can align on approach.
bool is designed to be internet-facing and multi-user, so security is a first-class goal (scrypt/argon2id, encrypted secrets, TLS/wss, per-user isolation, SSRF guards). Please report vulnerabilities privately — see SECURITY.md.
bool is free and MIT-licensed. If you'd like to help it get built, you can sponsor the project on GitHub — every bit of support (and every ⭐) genuinely helps.
MIT © 2026 Dan Farcaș