Parley is a federated, decentralized chat network that speaks plain IRC. Every person runs a small instance for their own domain, finding each other through DNS and well-known identity documents. Instances exchange signed messages over HTTPS and present the federated network to ordinary IRC clients like irssi and Wee Chat with no plugins.

Identities look like email: [email protected] runs on foo.com. Bob types /msg [email protected] hi and it just works. Status: working proof of concept demonstrating the design end to end but not hardened yet.

It works with the client you already have - two instances, two stock irssi sessions. CHATHISTORY pages through channels and private messages, a join replays what you have not been shown, and draft/read-marker puts where you have read up to on the account. Discovery via DNS + WKID. _parley._tcp.<domain> SRV points at the instance; https://<host>/.well-known/parley/instance.json publishes its ed25519 public key and inbox.

Automatic peering occurs when messaging someone on a new domain. Two kinds of channel: #dev is global and replicated, #notes is local. Moderation works via /ban by mask without channel ownership.

Addresses map onto ordinary IRC identity - a user's nick is the bare local part and their instance is the host.