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irssi

A modular text-mode IRC client.

irssi is a long-standing terminal IRC client with Perl scripting, theming, and a powerful key-binding system. The display is a status bar at the bottom plus a single channel- content area; tabs across networks, channels, and queries are switched with a keystroke. The "always-on" pattern of running irssi inside tmux on a remote server has been the canonical way to maintain a persistent IRC presence for over twenty years.

Timo Sirainen (also of Dovecot) started irssi in 1999. He stepped back as the lead maintainer in 2010, and the project is now community-maintained. The codebase is mature and stable; releases are infrequent but reliable, and the configuration approach has not changed substantially.

irssi competes for the "primary terminal IRC client" niche with WeeChat. Both have similar feature sets at this point — Perl scripting, theming, multiple-network support — but the cultural divide is real, with users tending to commit firmly to one or the other. irssi's strengths are simplicity and a smaller configuration surface.

Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install irssi
Fedora/RHEL:   sudo dnf install irssi
Arch:          sudo pacman -S irssi