I've been building a third-party cross-platform Discord client called kind (kind is not discord) in C++ and Qt 6. No Electron, no web wrapper. A proper native app for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The UI always loads instantly. On first load, things take as long to appear as Discord's network responses. On subsequent loads, everything comes from cache and is validated against REST in the background. It feels as fast as opening a plaintext file.

It's further along than I expected when I started. What's working right now: gateway with exponential backoff and reconnect, REST with per-route rate limiting, SQLite-backed cache with async reads/writes, full Discord permission resolution, and a composable block renderer that handles every Discord message type including embeds, attachments, reactions, stickers, and components. There's a full markdown parser, an async image cache with memory LRU and disk persistence, an unread and mute state system that survives restarts, and 370 passing unit and integration tests.

Voice is a post-launch problem. So are Nitro features.

Is there actually an audience for this outside of Linux power users? I know that's where the pain is most acute, but I'm genuinely curious whether Windows users would switch for the performance alone or whether the official client is good enough there that it doesn't matter.