Komai: a fine Matrix chat app you can get to love • Hacker News Board

Re: Komai: a fine Matrix chat app you can get to love

#41

Post by spantaleev » Fri, May 08, 2026, 8:13 PM UTC

nohell wrote: post #36

What an awful UI. - Microsoft Teams icons. Really??? - Padding everywhere - Feels like a machine control panel, not a chat app - Double sidebars? Why? This feels like a uTox clone. Not good in 2026. Even Teams has a significantly better interface.

The icons are not from Microsoft Teams. It's the Fluent System Icons (https://github.com/microsoft/fluentui-system-icons) free iconset by Microsoft, which Nheko (Komai's predecessor) also used and we continue to use. Because we found this iconset lacking in certain aspects, in Komai we also supplement it with Font Awesome.

Why double sidebars? Because Nheko established this pattern and I still think it's a good idea. On the desktop there's usually plenty of horizontal space to comfortably show everything without having to hide things away and require you to click multiple times. Still, both sidebars are collapsible to "just icons" for people who need the extra space.

In fact, most Matrix apps (Element, Discord, ..) have the same sort of "double sidebar" layout, but usually collapse the left-most sidebar to "icons only" by default. I think this makes it hard for new users to learn (icons are cryptic without a label) and there's no good reason to do it when you have enough horizontal space.

As for the padding, whether the defaults look good probably depends on screen size and personal preference. Komai is very configurable. There's a "Density" setting which offers 3 different options ("Spacious", "Compact" and "Dense"). "Spacious" is the default one, because it provides better ergonomics due to larger hit targets. Accessibility is important, but users who find the default padding too much can adjust it.

Disclosure: I've been working on Komai in my spare time for a few months now.

Re: Komai: a fine Matrix chat app you can get to love

#42

Post by spantaleev » Fri, May 08, 2026, 8:29 PM UTC

ASalazarMX wrote: post #39

rolymath wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This applies to all software. You didn't make the monitor your app is being displayed on. Stop taking credit for the compiler that made your code runnable, etc.

There's a great difference between making a table with tools other people made, and ordering a custom table on Amazon, waxing it, and claiming you made it. This shouldn't even be an argument. What a crazy era we live in where people can finally take full credit for someone else's work, because that someone else is an algorithm that even encourages you to do so.

If you mean Komai specifically, I think that this characterization is unfair.

Komai is explicitly presented as a fork of Nheko. We credit the upstream project, major libraries (matrix-sdk) and assets (iconsets, etc.), and are open about using AI during development.

I’m not claiming sole authorship or pretending Komai was created from scratch. It's built on existing work (done by various humans over many years) and we're being transparent and thankful about it.

Disclosure: I've spent multiple months working on Komai (with AI and other humans).

Re: Komai: a fine Matrix chat app you can get to love

#43

Post by 8fingerlouie » Fri, May 08, 2026, 11:39 PM UTC

bayarearefugee wrote: post #37

8fingerlouie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is AI coding these days, and if you're not, you may find yourself out of a job soon. You still need skilled engineers to "operate" the AIs and to verify the results, but why on earth would you spend 3 weeks coding something by hand that Codex or Claude can spit out in a couple of hours. For reference, at my employer we have so far in 2026 (1500+ developers) created 75% more code by AI this year compared to…

> we can now use skills to guarantee that the code that is created follows best practices, architecture patters, local governance and compliance. It is terrifying that any working software developer believes this is true. LLMs are useful tools. But regardless of your inputs they guarantee nothing , ever.

I'm merely reflecting on what reality is showing.

In a software house with 1000+ developer, we're using AI everywhere. We have plenty of skilled engineers to validate the output of LLMs, but instead of spending 3 weeks developing a new feature, they can now spend a couple of hours or days.

We absolutely still need skill engineers for keeping track of what goes on, but their productivity has skyrocketed when they no longer have to obsess over details for a long time.

Re: Komai: a fine Matrix chat app you can get to love

#44

Post by ASalazarMX » Fri, May 08, 2026, 11:58 PM UTC

spantaleev wrote: post #42

ASalazarMX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a great difference between making a table with tools other people made, and ordering a custom table on Amazon, waxing it, and claiming you made it. This shouldn't even be an argument. What a crazy era we live in where people can finally take full credit for someone else's work, because that someone else is an algorithm that even encourages you to do so.

If you mean Komai specifically, I think that this characterization is unfair. Komai is explicitly presented as a fork of Nheko. We credit the upstream project, major libraries (matrix-sdk) and assets (iconsets, etc.), and are open about using AI during development. I’m not claiming sole authorship or pretending Komai was created from scratch. It's built on existing work (done by various humans over many years) and we…

I was specifically addressing my parent comment, which was equating taking credit for LLM output to taking credit for making something using tooling or hardware.