modern-irc VS wish

You're not allowed null bytes in IRC messages: https://modern.ircdocs.horse/#parameters

Some IRC servers (especially those written in C) may interpret it as a line end, so you would have a similar issue

https://modern.ircdocs.horse/ is based on both 1459 and 2812, and describes the protocol shared by all current implementations. If you see any inaccuracy, please open a ticket at https://github.com/ircdocs/modern-irc/ so we can fix it.

You might wanna check it out. Things like code quotes and expand/collapse would be cool to add. I think some clients already support emoji as it's just UTF8?

It's common for IRC users to use IRC from a terminal client on their desktop. If they have a remote server, they'll use a screen session to keep their IRC client running in the background and re-open it when they want. Or they'll keep an eggdrop bot on a server somewhere, which is basically a sorta IRC proxy that they connect to from their desktop and can keep their user online in the background.

Here's some stuff on IRC: https://github.com/ircdocs/modern-irc | https://www.mirc.com/colors.html | https://wiki.wireshark.org/IRC

I have not tried this out but https://github.com/charmbracelet/wish - a companion to soft-serve - could be helpful to you

You're missing a slash in the link to wish: "https://github.com/charmbraceletwish" -> "https://github.com/charmbracelet/wish"

Re telnet;

You might enjoy various https://charm.sh/ apps, especially https://github.com/charmbracelet/wish. They seem to prefer SSH to telnet though.

In hindsight, I'd probably use something like https://github.com/charmbracelet/wish instead of doing the ANSI handling myself.

I'll have to see what the wish library offers…

If you do a lot of SSHing, Charm has Wish and Wishlist, Promwish... and the "just because" Confettysh haha