There's clearly a space after 'is', as you can confirm for yourself:
https://github.com/jenkinsci/instant-messaging-plugin/blob/master/src/main/java/hudson/plugins/im/build_notify/BuildToChatNotifier.java#L66

Have you confirmed that this is not some visual artifact or your IRC client - e.g. C&P the message into a Text editor to see if there's really no whitespace?

This is very interesting! My IRC client is XChat-GNOME. The space is missing visually, it's missing in ~/.xchat2/xchatlogs/*.log file, and it's missing when I copy & paste the text.

I'm also connecting to the IRC server through an IRC proxy (znc).

I wonder if one of those components might be eating the space in front of the IRC color code. I'll report back after I've narrowed this down.

I've ruled out znc and xchat. We're logging our dev channel with Supybot (that connects directly to the IRC server), and the IRC logs are also showing "Project app build #2131:STILL FAILING in 18 min: https://..." with no space in front of STILL FAILING.

I think this line might be accidentally eating the space:
https://github.com/jenkinsci/ircbot-plugin/blob/master/src/main/java/hudson/plugins/ircbot/v2/IRCColorizer.java#L72

I've created a pull request for this, but I'm not sure how to test it:
https://github.com/jenkinsci/ircbot-plugin/pull/13

I think I should be able to build an .hpi file and install it via https://jenkins.example.com/pluginManager/advanced? Only I'm not familiar with the Java build ecosystem. If you could give me some tips on what to do after cloning https://github.com/jenkinsci/ircbot-plugin, I'd appreciate it (I'm on Ubuntu 13.10).

A coworker suggested that 'pom.xml' files are used by Maven, so `sudo apt-get install maven' followed by 'mvn' produced a target/ircbot.hpi, which I'm trying to test now.

Unfortunately the plugin I built fails to connect to IRC with a non-specific

Mar 27, 2014 1:57:40 PM WARNING hudson.plugins.ircbot.v2.IRCConnection connect
Error connecting to irc: java.lang.NullPointerException

BTW here's a screenshot of the bug: http://i.imgur.com/JKa4QQN.png. I'd hoped to mention it together with a screenshot for the fix, but see above

The CI bot built an .hpi of my pull request, and I tried it instead of the .hpi I built on my laptop:
https://jenkins.ci.cloudbees.com/job/plugins/job/ircbot-plugin/27/

It works! http://i.imgur.com/sJvY0dp.png

Code changed in jenkins
User: Marius Gedminas
Path:
src/main/java/hudson/plugins/ircbot/v2/IRCColorizer.java
http://jenkins-ci.org/commit/ircbot-plugin/d9672576e9775e9c1962e55512edf2b98530f9d4
Log:
Don't drop the space in front of the build status

Should fix https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-22360

(I haven't tested the fix yet.)

Code changed in jenkins
User: Christoph Kutzinski
Path:
src/main/java/hudson/plugins/ircbot/v2/IRCColorizer.java
src/test/java/hudson/plugins/ircbot/v2/IRCColorizerTest.java
http://jenkins-ci.org/commit/ircbot-plugin/abb2a3f84c120c89a22f7bcdd632031d32cfe68b
Log:
Test case for JENKINS-22360