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Ask HN: Anyone want a CLI and push based Slack client (focused on battery life)?

5 points by busymichael ↗ HN
Two days a week I work remotely, usually unplugged from a power source for most of the day. I have to run Skype and Slack to keep connected to the office. I find both clients are bloated and hog battery.

I was thinking about coding a command line based client that would use the Slack API's to replicate Slack text chat functionality in a very minimal program.

I would use a cloud based server to poll Slack for new messages and then push them down to the client. This keeps the client from continually having to check for new messages -- and improves battery life for my laptop.

If it worked, I could add other chat channels.

One limitation: it would probably support text and image only -- not audio/video

Is anyone else facing the same problems? Would you be interested in such a solution?

What would you want to see in it?

Thanks!

7 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 36.9 ms ] thread
deft
Why not just use the IRC gateway? This seems like reinventing the wheel.
busymichael
I wasn't aware that slack had an IRC gateway -- thanks! I'll check the docs.

For me personally, I have a few chat clients I would want to integrate. The gateway will be a great bridge until I get it all built. Thanks!

randack
Just be aware of the caveats of the IRC gateway - it's somewhat frusrating trying to use both it and the web UI at the same time since messages read on IRC aren't marked as read immediately (it's the nature of the medium). There are also plenty of reports of messages on the web UI just not appearing at all on IRC, or vice versa (depending on the origin of the message).

So it can certainly hold you over, but just beware.

ErikRogneby
If you turn off auto expanding gifs and images it saves a lot of your battery. I also wonder if the browser based client is any less of a hog?

To answer your question, if I'm on the CLI, I'm doing work. Slack helps with team cohesion but is a focus killer. I wouldn't be interested.

wingerlang
I recently moved to the browser version and unless I'm under the placebo effect it helps quite a bit.
draven
At work I use wee-slack ( https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack ) a plugin for weechat that uses the slack API (not the IRC gateway.) Images / code snippets / etc. were rendered as an HTTP link. It works pretty well, CPU and memory usage are low, unlike the web interface.