I've never really played around with IRC, but I've definitely had the experience the author talks about with Matrix. The server (like mentioned about IRC) is co

I've never really played around with IRC, but I've definitely had the experience the author talks about with Matrix. The server (like mentioned about IRC) is complicated, but interfacing with it as a user or a bot is mostly a few REST endpoints. I've started using Matrix as my go-to interface for new projects. You get IO for free, plus auth, user accounts, and multi-device; leaving just the fun stuff.