Orbit

A modern terminal IRC client built with Go and the Charm ecosystem.

Features

• Clean three-panel TUI layout (channel list, chat, nick list)
• Full IRC protocol support with IRCv3 capabilities
• Channel and direct message management
• Nick list with mode prefixes and privilege sorting
• Timestamped, column-aligned chat display
• Nick tab-completion and command history
• Configurable themes and keybindings

Install

Quick install (Linux & macOS)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iampoul/orbit/main/install.sh | sh

Downloads the latest release, verifies the SHA-256 checksum, and installs to ~/.local/bin (if on $PATH) or /usr/local/bin.

go install

go install github.com/iampoul/orbit/cmd/orbit@latest

Manual download

Pre-built binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows are attached to every GitHub Release.

Build from source

git clone git@github.com:iampoul/orbit.git
cd orbit
go build -o orbit ./cmd/orbit

Usage

# Connect to a server
orbit --server irc.libera.chat --nick mynick

# With TLS
orbit --server irc.libera.chat --port 6697 --tls --nick mynick

Configuration

Orbit looks for ~/.config/orbit/config.yaml:

server: irc.libera.chat
port: 6697
tls: true
nick: mynick
username: mynick
realname: My Name
channels:
  - "#general"
  - "#dev"

Keybindings

Key	Action
Ctrl+B	Toggle channel sidebar
Ctrl+U	Toggle nick list
Ctrl+Up/Down	Switch buffer
Alt+1-9	Jump to buffer
PgUp/PgDn	Scroll chat
Tab	Nick completion
Ctrl+C	Quit

License

MIT