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Dev tools · July 14, 2026

Cascade Chat – A Hackable IRCv3 Client for macOS, Windows, and Linux

Hello HN! I'm Matt and today I'd like to show you Cascade Chat. One of my earliest internet experiences was with mIRC. I always admired its straightforward, pleasant UI and the way it wove a hackable core into the code. The way you could build on the visual and API layers of the underlying IRC client to me was fascinating software machinery. It was truly a client that you could build on top of. As my career has progressed, I moved away from Windows and adopted Linux as my daily driver. That was where I found HexChat, the closest thing I could find to mIRC many years later. While I really…

Cascade Chat – A Hackable IRCv3 Client for macOS, Windows, and Linux launched on July 14, 2026 with 8 votes, #2,235 of 24,623 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.

Visit github.com ↗Alternativestop 9% of July 2026

What it does

A cross-platform desktop IRC client for the modern era complete with scripting and plugins - matt0x6F/irc-client

In the maker’s words, at launch

Hello HN! I'm Matt and today I'd like to show you Cascade Chat. One of my earliest internet experiences was with mIRC. I always admired its straightforward, pleasant UI and the way it wove a hackable core into the code. The way you could build on the visual and API layers of the underlying IRC client to me was…

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