I was curious if this was still a potential feature? I found a thread on the steam forums where Jens Erik posted that Client-Side mods were something that the team wanted to be possible.
I personally host a small server for some friends and some of us enjoy different mods that could potentially be client side.
Some examples are UI changes or textures. There was a UI mod I like that changes/rescales those popups for things such as Overencumbered or the location discovery. Also one to remove the blood on the screen. My cousin wants some of the jiggle physics mod and different armor texture mods. One of my friends would like to swap the spider models with something like a snake.
Not everyone wants to have these little changes, so I’m reluctant to require each and every mod and have to shut down the server completely to update every little mod update there is.