Parley: Federated, decentralised chat that speaks plain IRC
6 hours ago
- Parley is a federated, decentralized chat network where each domain runs its own instance, and identities use email-like addresses (user@domain).
- Instances communicate through signed HTTPS messages, discover each other via DNS SRV records and well-known documents, and present the entire network to ordinary IRC clients.
- It supports IRCv3 features like server-time, echo-message, multi-prefix, and CHATHISTORY for scrollback; channels are either global (replicated across linked instances) or local (never leave the instance).
- Moderation is achieved through per-user or per-instance block lists (ban masks); there are no channel operators for global channels, and kicking is not possible.
- Deployment requires a domain, TLS, an SRV record, and persistent storage; the software is configured via flags/environment variables and database settings, with no config file.
- Authentication supports passwords, IRC tokens, OpenID Connect, and trusted proxy headers; accounts can be managed via the web UI, CLI, or API.