Looking at the conversations they are having on GitHub, that doesn't seem like a great idea. If I was going to contribute to the main repo, it would be to help with whatever they are doing, not to push ideas that they are not looking to implement at this time. They are working on rewriting the UI anyway. I really don't see what would be the problem with having an alternative front for people with different tastes that those of the devs.

It’s simpler than creating a whole separate client

Maybe. But I wasn't really looking for the simplest way to tweak the UI, I'm already doing that with my own scripts. Making a web client with a different UI that people can fork and make their own just sounds like a cool project to work on.