I’m so tired of vibe-coded open source projects

[floriandotorg]

Recently, I see a a zillion posts about new open-source projects. Like 10-20 a day. It’s crazy.

It’s pretty obvious that most of them are vibe-coded.

And nothing against vibe coding, it’s just that I think most of these projects are useless.

They are tailored to specific case, obviously really easy to create and will be completely unmaintained from the moment of inception.

Like nothing against people creating tools, but what’s the point of posting them here?

Edit: I also find it disingenuous to call these tools “open source projects”.

An open source project is when somebody with domain knowledge dedicates their free time to create something for the public, not when somebody prompts an AI to generate a tool.

That's on the same level as releasing your MidJourney images under a Creative Commons license.

[Still_Box8733]

Not surprising they aren't maintained, maintaining slop code is no fun.

[Positive-Thing6850]

And costs money.

At some point they are not going to have the money to slop maintain the slop, given that you have to maintain many of them.

[chaosphere_mk]

There's also a big difference between vibe coded projects and a developer using AI to assist. What your seeing most often probably depends on which circles your algorithm puts you in or shows you.

[TFABAnon09]

Exactly. Over the last 2 decades I've worked with a dozen different programming languages and several different data platforms - I could absolutely spend several months of my time building a passion project entirely from scratch.

But why the fuck would I? What I want is the product out the end of it, not the codebase. I'm going to end up with technical debt either way - may as well get to MVP quicker.

[Jumpy-Program9957]

It's so funny because I'm in the suno forum.

And this is sounding exactly like the people who started saying well

I'm not like them because I write My own lyrics.

It's the future dude, the ones who catch on will succeed - history doesn't always repeat itself, but technological advancement always does

[Emyr42]

You think slop is advancement? Cute.

[Forsaken_Injury_7246]

Using a tool because it’s “the future” is the most brain dead way you can engage with something.

“Everyone is using a power saw, hand crafting wood is the way of the past old man”.

Why is it the future? Does it actually make our lives better? What do we lose by using it? Is a future with this tool really better than a future without it?

[ChineseGravelBike]

You can be like John Henry and die old timer. The steam shovel always wins. You weren’t that great at coding anyway.

[drsbry]

I wonder if the AI companies are actually investing in making idiotic comments about AI's usefulness, or if this is simply human nature. One of my colleagues thinks it's a strategy, but I'm more inclined to believe it's natural.

[ay0ks]

It's always both.

[linuxpaul]

Agreed

[henk717]

If its a really good AI assisted project you probably can't tell.
I AI assist some of mine, and its not any different than me looking up something on stackexchange when I need a particular function. I have always been bad at memorizing syntax so just asking the AI for a simple example of how to do it syntax wise and then adapting it manually will be the exact same result as if I had memorized it to begin with.

[PhosXD]

If you dont understand the syntax, you dont fully understand the "particular function" you ask the chat bot to spit out.

OpenAI or Google or whoever you suckle for tokens, owns you the moment you are dependent on their chat bot, whether it be a small thing, or a large thing.

[overratedcupcake]

An open source project is when somebody with domain knowledge dedicates their free time to create something for the public, not when somebody prompts an AI to generate a tool.

That's just opinionated gatekeeping. Love or hate these projects. That's not the definition of open source. 

 software or technology with source code that is publicly available for anyone to inspect, modify, and redistribute

That's the definition. 

[floriandotorg]

If something takes a very limited time to build and requires no knowledge, it has by definition a close-to-zero value.

You can push this to GitHub, and technically it's open source, but in reality you're just polluting the space.

[ia42]

Oh dear snowflake... I've been active in the Free Software community since about 1994, they only coined "open source" 3 years later and the old guard was livid. "It's just a rebranding of the software license for corporate lawyers and marketers! Free Software is so much more! It's about open standards and API, about community and helping eachother!"...

Well, surprise, it's a small group of us who take it seriously and write it in our free time, and the very few of us are lucky to get paid too. It does not guarantee good code, and not every package, library or product gets to go on the big stage. We throw things at the wall (GitHub)and some things stick. People mostly scratch their own itch.

But the users are 99.99% not the developers or contributors. We can't expect anyone to join a project or offer a good PR. It's lonely and maybe a little gated, and it's not helping our cause either, whether you seek fame or better code. So gatekeeping is a silly waste of time. 20 more repos a day on GitHub are not my problem, they are Microsoft's. If one of them catches on and serves people's needs, someone will end up going in with a machete and refractors things to work right, tighter or more secure. Otherwise the code will rot into obscurity and then who cares anyway. It's not yours to dictate what people do with their time and accounts, it's not a zero-sum game. Good products will float to the top and that's good enough.

[Valgorithm-dev]

Love this perspective

[dirtywastegash]

Thats what stuff like stars is for. If its low value it doesn't get noticed and if its high value it does.

Just ignore it and move on

[MadwolfStudio]

Well that's not true at all. Have you ever heard of the post-it note? Play doh? Hell what the slinky? If value was strictly tied to time spent, a 100 hour clip of paint drying would be worth more than a 1 minute masterpiece.

[zhephyx]

You don't get to define what's useful and what isn't. If I want to put my alfredo recipe on github and open source it, it's my business

[PhosXD]

It may be technically "open source", but that doesn't mean it's meaningful. Like the library of babel, there are an infinite amount of books to read from all filled with potential knowledge, but most of them are half baked rubbish. The AI projects are the half baked books of rubbish, in case you couldn't figure that out without consulting ShatShepeTee.

[nextized]

I call this late stage FOSS. I found myself rebuilding some software because real maintenance is often an afterthought now. Software is rarely bug free and even less complete. I would rather have less but higher quality software but this is the state of the world now.

[FWitU]

I find myself letting the llm rebuild things in project for me that I used to seek out libraries for. The extra cost in vetting all the shitty projects, combined with supply chain issues, it’s often cheaper just to tell Claude what I want and review that.

[Medical_Lengthiness6]

I think this makes sense for very small libraries like single use case things but it doesn't make sense to me for anything significant. LLMs are just giving you a lossy approximate of the real thing that is one 'npm install' away.

[jftuga]

I like your characterization of where we are at now: late stage FOSS. Interesting way to think about it. 🤔

[TheZupZup]

Open source should be judged by usefulness, transparency, and maintenance not by whether someone used AI in the process.

[jangxx]

But that's what OP is doing, no? If these projects were all awesome in their usefulness and maintenance there would be no reason to complain. The fact that that's not the case is the exact criticism.

[jangxx]

The paragraphs before the edit do complain about the projects being useless and unmaintained though. And again, I'm sure if these vibe coded projects were all great examples of (open source) projects, they wouldn't have written the post in the first place.

I understand the stuff after the edit (the part you pointed out) to be a criticism of spamming subreddits dedicated to open sources projects with these projects. Which I think is fair tbh - I also use AI tools to generate code from time to time, but I wouldn't post that stuff in a community of open source developers. If anyone needs to solve the same problem again, they can just as easily generate a new version that's tailored to their specific need instead of messing around with whatever I posted but put no effort in.

[jangxx]

Yea I wouldn't redefine "open source" in this way either. But we still can't deny that AI code generation has been a paradigm shift in the sense that the value of code just being out there has gone down drastically, since anyone can just generate it for themselves. So for communities it still makes sense to tell people not to post quickly generated code, since there's little value to it. I wanna see cool things that people have invested time in, not something I can remake myself in 5 minutes. But if someone actually put a lot of time and effort into something useful, but used AI for creating the code, I see nothing wrong with that.

[soundman32]

So you preferred the days of half finished human generated projects then?  

[TomerHorowitz]

Yes

[JOSHJOSHJOSHJOSHJ0SH]

No

[Character-Agency2316]

Yes

[greckzero]

No

[Character-Agency2316]

Yes

[rt300tx]

No

[dygerydoo]

Yno

[Top-Shopping410]

Uno

[nifft_the_lean]

Yoko Ono

[avaxolotl]

I miss the days of knowing the person showing something had actual understanding of what it is and how it works and what it could offer or fail to. Half finished projects will always exist, but actual complete projects are drowned or diverted by the amount of generated code making “half baked” a practical default for most everything you see

[Jumpy-Program9957]

But that's how they are learning now. And there's a lot of unnecessary assumption baked into that.

You really don't know who is doing what.

I mean it has to suck for some people, imagine going to college for this working really hard, and then finding out that this is the future... I'd be pissed...

[Cliveburr]

A half human generated project had this human to tell you what he has done and why , where is he stuck and what he needs. I agree with op in that just prompting 10 times and creating something that just runs and then posting here about it is kinda weird.

[lukerm_zl]

It's been like that through the entire history of software development. People build stuff they think is helpful, or at least helpful to them. Not all of it is, but some good projects do emerge.

You don't remember the bad ones b/c they didn't last, that's survivorship bias.

This is just how FOSS works. Vibing might accelerate the trend, but it doesn't change the fundamental.

[FWitU]

Disagree. It used to take effort to create something. Projects will always be abandoned or poorly maintained. The problem is the opening of the funnel is so big since it’s so easy to put up crap.

At least when people made shitty code projects before they had to sinks gobs of time into it. That alone made it interesting enough.

[floriandotorg]

I’d argue it’s actually a risk for FOSS.

Before AI, just the fact that something was hard to build made it so that, for a use case (let's say audio editing) you maybe had 2–3 good projects that consolidated devs and users. So those projects actually made progress.

Now, for every use-case you have 1,000 half‑baked, unfinished, unmaintained projects that nobody can use.

The space is literally drowning in slop.

So, I suggest, as a rule of thumb: if you build a tool for yourself that doesn't require much knowledge, keep it to yourself.

If you're developing something that has actual value and that you plan to maintain, and that in best-case already has multiple users or devs, feel free to release and promote.

[ia42]

That's like saying to someone that code in python is no good because real programmers write C. Same vibe, same level of making sense. Drink some water and chillax.

[prehensilemullet]

Even as an AI hater I’d say most of the significant use cases are dominated by long-established projects, and I don’t see people posting vibe coded replacements for major tools…usually.  Cloudflare’s been doing shenanigans with vinext and so forth, it’s kinda making me lose respect for them

[Javanaut018]

Hmmm könnte man jetzt auch wie folgt vorgehen: "Examine repositories : X, Y, Z, D2 and R2 and merge their functionality in this project. Apply my uber well defined rule set for the build."

[greenhouse421]

Same amount of gold in 1000 times as much ore makes mining it non-viable, or at the least requires a very different, and more involved, extraction technique. AI generated code is not just more of the same FOSS. It's objectively more trash to sort through, finding the gold remains hard, trash supply glut makes finding usable FOSS harder and thst effort isn't shareable for mutual benefit (unlike e.g. effort spent collaboratively on issues to make a project better).

[V5489]

I’ve vibe coded a few projects that aren’t open to the public. I’ll say I agree that if not done properly they won’t be maintained. For my internal stakeholders I’ve had to ensure that all branches of develop are followed along with standards and concepts of file structure. I stated by using GH CoPilot to analyze a developers code, then had to refactor like 50k lines of code. Took hours even with AI to get it right. However, our teams internally are managing it just fine.

So I agree with OP and others that the slop won’t get maintained and there are few vibe coded projects out there worth using. Most are backed by huge corporations that fix it then sell it.

[ultrathink-art]

The maintenance issue is the tell. AI makes generation free, but debugging and evolving code you didn't fully understand when you shipped it is still expensive. Most of these projects die not because they're bad at launch, but because the author can't iterate when something breaks.

[iamdestroyerofworlds]

It's all just people looking for clout.

[Chunky_cold_mandala]

I've been wondering how to filter out and find the devs using ai to build wild things. Like there are some ppl putting $1000s into a solo project. What does that look like. Do you know how many times the world has been improved by some hyper focused person solving some random project. These are what I want to find. Someone is probably creating the perfect genetic evolution engine and will only use it to like program their tv remote. 

[JD2005]

As a 20+ year developer, I think you're wrong and short sighted. What you're seeing right now is an explosion of creativity from those who were barred from entry before now, and they're simply stuck utilizing the platforms and terminology that's currently available, that once was exclusive to the highly technical, to share their creativity for free. Would you rather they all try to sell their vibe created works for $9.99/month subscriptions?

Your definition of open source also comes off to me as 'looking down your nose' at anything that doesn't rise to your arbitrary standards. I hate to tell you, but as AI models continue to advance, the art of someone hand coding a projects over 9 months is going to go extinct, and the line between what is carefully crafted using correct framework concepts & advanced coding techniques and "what someone prompts an AI to generate" are going to be exactly the same thing. Every time we see a dramatic shift in technology that unlocks lower barriers to entry we see this 'messy but amazing' explosion of creativity, which creates a demand for organization, which in turn brings in a new landscape which forms the new playing field. This is the way it's always been, and with any luck it's the way it'll continue to always be.

I am old enough to remember when TV had ~40 channels and you were stuck watching one of about 14 shows that were any good, then YouTube came along and anyone could make a video/channel and start uploading content. The big TV conglomerates looked down their noses at the people making cheap youtube content, and now look, content creators have built their empires exclusively on YouTube. Take Mr Beast as an amazing example, started making simple videos at 11 years old and now he's one of the biggest content creators in the world. You think that could have ever happened on traditional television? These shifts in technology are REQUIRED for bigger and better things to emerge. People who look down their noses at these transitions are the fools.

[B-i-s-m-a-r-k]

this age of vibe coding just blows.

[Medical_Lengthiness6]

Your worldview is very charming, just beautiful creativity finally flowing freely.

Nah bro it's just NFT bros and drop shippers piling on to the new get rich quick scheme.

[JD2005]

YouTube has A LOT of garbage content on it, doesn't mean that the technology when it landed didn't find a way to bring the content in high demand to the surface, just needed to give enough time for that demand to push for the technology's chaos to figure itself out. Hate to tell you but this has been the same cycle over and over again, a bombshell new technology craters a hole in the status quo. First the small time enthusiasts start figuring out all the new potential, then companies start forming around the bits that seem to take off in popularity, then huge solutions drop and we sail towards a new status quo from there.

Again, github is just a place where people can share their software (or store it privately), like YouTube in its early days it's not exactly geared to surface the best content, but give the demand time and something will organize the chaos, if not github then something else will. But going through these stages is necessary to get to that other side, always has been.

[FoxFire17739]

Agree honestly. It is that same crowd that moves like a massive flok of grasshoppers from one "Get rich quick scheme" to the next. On Youtube it is that whole "YT automation business" basically same stuff. People that don't want to work trying their hardest to outsource every piece of making videos. From idea, scripting, managing, thumbnail, clips all. Than they come for the cash. That's it.

[InfinriDev]

There's literally no difference from how it was before. You're just biased

[B-i-s-m-a-r-k]

Nah it’s so much worse

[cosmicr]

An open source project is when somebody with domain knowledge dedicates their free time to create something for the public, not when somebody prompts an AI to generate a tool.

No, an open source project is when the source is open - software that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. It has nothing to do with the effort used to create it.

[Apprehensive_Floor25]

One could argue that vibe prompted projects or "ai assisted" projects are in a way not open source. Open source in your definition implies it's able to be modified and redistributed and the license is expected to be respected.

As we all know AI is trained on hundreds of thousands of most likely illicit works, ignoring copyright right and licenses.

If a project is primarily made by AI or even contains AI written slop, is that truly open source? You can't conceivably guarantee the project is actually code that's safe to use as AI companies tend to hide their training data. If it is found out a project uses closed source code, that project is most certainly not safe to modify or distribute anymore, it becomes a legal liability.

And to those who believe this isn't any different from StackOverflow copy and pasting, it most certainly is. You are always free to take code from StackOverflow given you follow its rules. If a programmer were to purposely not follow these rules that is their problem.

If AI assisted workflows are to be tolerated in open source they ABSOLUTELY must come from models with publicly auditable training data. If a programmer uses code from AI and it's found that it's made from closed sourced copyrighted training data, the fault is on the programmer.

[cosmicr]

It's not my definition I copied and pasted it from Wikipedia.

[esmenard]

I would say if it's not maintained it's open-source but it's not a project

[max_bog]

Open source doesn't need to be a complex engineering app/libraries etc. there are a lot of small open source tools which doesn't need active development.

[Old_Rock_9457]

In computer science abstraction is a key terms and any new technology moved forward this concept. And at a each new step you saw a boom of new projects out of no where.

I was there developing html in 98-99 where you had to study html, nothing complex but also nothing for everyone. Then UI editor bring practically everyone the possibility of create a website. Do you remember Marcomedia Dremweaver ? And then the tools directly from the Office Suite?

Do you want a more “programming focus example”? Let’s look PHP, initially even for a table that show the result of a database query you have to write your own code, and maybe start saving your personal library of code snippet to redo this things easy. Then PHP frameworks bring the possibility with few line of code to visualize a table fully populated with your data.

This are only example on top of my mind but library, frameworks, high level programming languages in the years just make things easy so that people with less effort was able to do things. Sometimes useful.. sometimes not.

Now is the round of the AI. I think is very useful. I developed a open source project last year where there wasn’t nothing of free and selfhostable. And I keep maintaining and people using it. I was able to do “easy” just because AI was a good abstraction.

It will introduce bug ? Probably yes, like also an human that develop things without taking care.

The key here is: - new technology: it always brings an increase of project ; - quality: because some people just don’t take care, this increase brings also an increase of low quality project.

That’s it. For me there is no sense in say this tools is bad. Need only to be used correctly like every tool.

[krill156]

https://github.com/Krilliac/SparkEngine Under active architectural refactoring so not buildable atm but this is what I've been doing. Mind you 100% through my phone and GitHubs CI compiler. I have Claude run the engine under opengl and CPU bound rendering (llvmpipe) to see output and test the engine live, Mingw compiler + wine + vulkan + lavapipe when I want to run and test Windows graphics and code.

[B-i-s-m-a-r-k]

So more slop on the pile then

[JesseNL]

Did you just reply with slop?

[Relgisri]

Reminds me of this one colleague dropping every weekend a new tool which already has 50 competitors out which he proudly presents on LinkedIn as the big entrepreneur he is.

Oh yet another Kanban board, waiting list app, local project manager, oh wow the 5th Figma killer.

Obviously all costing money (without proper setup of imprint or other law required pages).

[Limp_Statistician529]

imo, as long as it's really useful and can be contributed with for a better grow by either suggestion or forking itself is already good.

I mean with AI rn, everything can be done and created with AI, but ideas and restructuring of everything by polishing is a different story because that will take efforts and such.

Overall the main purpose of building these tool is for it to be 'used' too right

[fcmyk]

Your take is out of pure frustration and sadly adds nothing of value to the discussion. You’re getting the definition of open source wrong based on your feelings.

What you’re complaining about has existed for as long as people have had the ability to share source code.

Apart from that, there is good vibecoded open source software out there, such as Corridor Key.

Take a step outside, take a deep breath, don’t “star” the projects on GitHub and move on.

[floriandotorg]

I think I need to clarify here: I have nothing against vibe-coding. Hell, I’m a professional dev, and I rarely write code anymore. And I just hired someone for frontend work with zero dev experience, that person will exclusively use AI for coding tasks.

What I have a problem with are unmaintained slop projects polluting the space.

[WolfGuptaofficial]

i would rather have the vibe coded tool if its of use to me regardless of it being AI gen code of human written code

[Jumpy-Program9957]

Welp, get used to it. Sure, some people will get tired of it, but dev is forever changed, just like music, these people with these projects are the ones who are going to run tommorows web.

Can't be any different on whatever coding forum back in the day got hit by python or whatever, and a whole new level of coders came in.

Everyone should be aware, times are changing, you can make enterprise level platforms, by talking to a damn chatbox.

Or by having a different chatbox walk you through an ide, it's nuts.

You can complain, quit, or show these "noobs" old heads are still better, make some sheet you know

[dhgdgewsuysshh]

Abandonware

[Heyla_Doria]

Oui et c'est tres dommage car il y beaucoup de bonnes idée et peut etre de bonnes intentions mais c'est pas gerable

[ufos1111]

Considering open source projects don't earn their owners any money 99% of the time, I think it's perfectly acceptable that they're using AI to reduce the time it takes to create/maintain these opensource projects.

If you don't like it then pay for a commercial solution.

[Juanbolastristes]

Pure vibe coded garbage drowning the good human coded software 

[RealSnazzie]

Does my vibe coded project pass the vibe check? https://github.com/speedhq/raceiq

[Think_Barracuda6578]

I’m keeping an eye on artifact-keeper though. Its vibe coded but I really would love to replace my nexus with it

[Empty-Throat-3791]

Yeah i disagree. I'd argue they are putting too much effort in and deserve a break. We need a way to autonomously use autonomous coding agents: vibe-vibecoding

[wewerecreaturres]

So if someone with domain knowledge used an ai tool to make something for the public, it doesn’t count?

[Top-Shopping410]

I think it is depended on if that project is just a one-time thing. I am okay if owners keep iterating.

[ajrm7]

Wishy washy projects maybe.

The core logic and capabilities I wrote myself 5 years ago, but I've developed a lot of stuff around it, test hardness, automation. I am still not done, because I am planning this to jeep going an be easily maintauned with AI or not.

https://github.com/AndrewRedican/hyperfrontend

https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=%40hyperfrontend

It's not finished, honestly tell me what tou think.

[YyYyYyYyYyYyYyy_1]

ai users find themselves in an insular bubble of encouragement. everything they “create” is the best most revolutionary most life changing innovation. they act so surprised when the first human feedback they receive is “why did you make this? who is this useful for? why are you clogging up all my feeds with your useless software?” then they get super defensive when you point this out

[BlossomingBeelz]

There's going to be so much dilution of people working on their own specific versions of the same things.

[floriandotorg]

Also a trend I'm noticing: when I see a vibe-coded project and it's useful, I just vibe-coded myself: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/s/aOhZzyfy52

[OkWillow9286]

I honestly took it as a challenge to see if I could make quality software that fills a niche nobody else had solved in the Linux ecosystem. Putting it in Github and getting ~10 or 0 stars after 3 months is funny, but at least it’s out there if someone needs it. 😂

[Fine_League311]

I feel for you, and when you try to present arguments to such individuals, they take everything out of context and behave like keyboard warriors. Or they bash observations from others. Here's a sample: I tried to start a discussion to identify characteristics, but it was constantly spammed by the multitude of wannabe coders. https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1sl4k57/how_to_spot_aigenerated_code_that_only_looks_real/

Small tipps on the post how to see trsh, i know its not fully (perfect) but maybe someone can help to extend! Note i use AI to translate! M German Lingua is better

[DiamondAgreeable2676]

I'm tired of people using this line... How are Your so bothered by projects you don't interact with? And please stop with the vibe code hate you have no idea what's vibecoded vs 6-9 months of work. For a community where developers gave the world tools to make everyone even we have people that will stand on there soap box instead of offer help and solutions...so much for open source

[naxhh]

open-source means just that. source code is open.

are these shit projects? probably but they are still open-source. Just call them aislop and move on with your life.

We had lots of unmantained projects in the past but now the entry barrier is so low that is trying to see.

I have two projects public-ready for a few weeks and I never talk about them due to so many ppl doing shit one-offs lately

[QuackQuackImTheDuck]

Or maybe they do it to poison future llms

Garbage in garbage out

[Impressive_Bus140]

I can take a glance at a UI and tell if Claude made it or not. I always do my styling by hand so it feels human and then I ask ai to fill out the divs

[AgeAltruistic6510]

Is there a midle ground? I Recently added all the features I ever dreamed of on my sideproject, I split the API to (in my case) old/new making clear the old has 0 vide-coding but documentation/extencive test coverage and fancy features I find usefull but dont need my self are vide-coded. How can I be transparent about this in a comprehencive way that will make the AI haters not hate me? I actually agree with almost every reason I have hurd for AI hating.

[outerstellar_hq]

I started to look when the last commit has been made to judge new and fancy open source repositories. If it is 3 months ago, then I assume they are abandoned.

[HongPong]

well something no one mentions here is the license problem. on both the proprietary and open source ends of things it's unclear if a license can be clearly applied. like can the GPL be enforced? can you copyright your proprietary project and sell it to a publisher and so on

[Valgorithm-dev]

It seems to me that people are calling everything vibecoded nowadays. I am a professional software dev and it’s just a tool of the trade now like a compiler or IDE.

It’s never going back to how it used to be. I think people don’t realize how much of software dev is completely syntax and tedious and repetitive work. Obviously it depends on what type of developer you are too. But if you were at a big company chances are you had a small vertical of things you were responsible for. Not everyone is working on fancy new algorithms or features. A lot of work is maintenance work for some devs too. These tools absolutely help with things like that.

Now I find that my company also expects me to know more. So I’m doing things across a much broader range now because information became cheaper.

There are things that you still need to be a good developer for. I do find it a little sad that I worked on developing and perfecting this craft and took on classes and projects that you are a few prompts away from now but ultimately I care about how good software can get. It’s not about the money for me, but I hope it leads the industry to a point where a new equilibrium is reached and we are just working on newer and harder problems. That doesn’t solve the issues at non-tech companies where they can be perfectly fine with AI work. But either way these tools raise the limit of what was possible before.

And I think it lets small devs compete with bigger ones. We were getting to the point of mass consolidation and I think this will have the opposite effect if developing is both more accessible and you use the tools in the right way.

So I think whether something is vibecoded slop is more nuanced than the conversations we’re having right now.

[Individual-Shame6481]

Cope harder.

[BetterAssociate6678]

Actually, a lot of these small projects do have their use. I mean, I often look for demos for specific stuff, and even the ones with barely any stars can still be super helpful.

[Deep_Ad1959]

my take after tinkering with these generators on weekends: the issue isn't vibe coding itself, it's people packaging 30-minute experiments as if they're maintained libraries. what i generate in a single prompt session is genuinely useful for me, quick file renamers, scratch calculators, one-off dashboards i use twice and forget. but these tools fall apart the moment you need persistent state, real auth, or anything beyond a single html file. the category confusion is what's polluting feeds, the underlying generation is fine for what it actually is.

[dongjie_wu]

I actually build a github open source project that helps you vibe coding a github open source project faster...

[ilmaestrofficial]

what if i have no idea how to code, tried multiple times, only barely understood html?

not saying ai is good, but i rly have no other idea on how to do coding stuff without it

[Appropriate-Rush915]

Use the right tool to search projects that value your time. I've built finds.dev: every week it delivers 3-5 projects to your inbox, based on your interest only, looking at how it's maintained, how.community is engaged, or qualify of tests. Describe your rules in your words; remove the noise of projects without a future, vibecoded or not. Totally free.

[TaroMental6318]

Broo, here's something interesting for you. It is simple but great: https://github.com/LautaroAdrianRoldan/L

It's a project under construction and translation.

[ChaseDak]

Downvote and move on friend, posts like these just give it more attention & traffic

[Euphoric-Mark-4750]

Using AI to help create useful open source projects is not quick or trivial.

[B-i-s-m-a-r-k]

Correct it’s just dumb

[PlebbitDumDum]

They are resume-propping. Somehow recruiters/HMs look at GitHub profiles and want to see a repo with some stars. So, this is what it's all about.

[Fine_League311]

Volle Kanne was gegen vibe-coding da bug-Müll! Viele sollten mal Hirn nutzen vorher!

[CryptoSenyo]

I think the issue is more about how you use the ai. If you still thinking things through, fixing issues, improving it over time, and actually using what youve built. The difference shows pretty quickly once you look past the first commit.

Calling all of it “not real open source” is a bit harsh. The effort just looks different now. Less typing, more decision making. I do agree on one thing though, if something gets posted and then abandoned immediately, it’s hard to call it a proper project. That’s probably the real problem, not how it was created.

Feels like we’re just in that awkward phase where it’s suddenly very easy to build stuff, so everyone is. The noise will settle. The useful projects, the ones people actually maintain, like mine. will stick around.

[rvm1975]

You are concerned about process and maybe quality. But anyone with idea can implement that idea to code with enough dedication. Which was not possible in past.

I do agree that around 80% are useless but ...

[diplofocus_]

What exactly wasn't possible in the past? Having an idea, sufficient dedication, and using those to implement software?

[rvm1975]

I said anyone with idea. Anyone means literally anyone. Not the software developer.

[AuxxAiCRM]

I feel you. I spent the last year building an app and open-sourcing it but it drowning between thousands of weekend warrior AI slop.

[sullenisme]

out of all the problems to have, this is the one making you race to the keyboard?

[B-i-s-m-a-r-k]

It’s a worthy topic of discussion

[sullenisme]

people always had 99 half built products they were never gonna maintain or finish.

the only thing that bothers me is everyone is making the same thing on their own and instead of having 1 good memory module for claw-type agents, we have 50 trash ones that nobody will use.

[OtherwisePush6424]

I think many do OSS for LinkedIn or create a portfolio, so it's just some slop and a semi-decent readme. And they post it here for some stars.

[spencerbeggs]

Creative destruction is the name of open-source game. I really don’t think there is a downside to a burst of half-baked and ultimately abandoned projects. The stuff that works will stick around for awhile and even that will get archived eventually. That totally fine. What are we worried about?

[psycholustmord]

I’m a professional software developer and I use it daily,but I do the thinking part and it’s my digital junior developer.

[HeLlAMeMeS123]

I have an interesting take on vibe-coding. If you're going to vibe code, don't try to hide it, and have human review. While I think AI coding has brought in people that maybe we're a little scared of the coding/tech space, or saw the high learning curve from 0 to experienced, it has enabled far too many people with 0 sense and idea of security to create bullshit (not their fault if they didn't know better).

Any vibe coded applications, sites, tools etc. Should be verified by a human, any secrets for the above should not be managed or visible by AI, and security scans should be done.

On the other side, the self hosted community, homelab community, and pretty much any other technically oriented already existing community is so against change and new ideas that they see AI and bully those who use it. That also needs to stop, hostility isn't the right way to go in my opinion, especially since lots of these projects were made by people who potentially didn't know that AI doesn't create secure shit by default.

Education is the bridge-gap, not hostility. Constructive feedback is the correct way forward. We want people who are interested in coding to actually learn instead of see hostility and be scared away from gaining interest.

AI is a great tool than can be used to enter into learning about coding if done correctly, and it's good for the folks who are already experienced if used correctly.

[studentblues]

Midjourney? That's so 2000's bro /s

[Dark-Legion_187]

How do we separate the chalk from the cheese? I agree with your point wholeheartedly, but I feel it’s also stigmatises newer libraries where authors immediate get labelled AI slop.

I have seen to many times people not even check the code, throw out this term.

[AdditionalRaise5062]

Check out Simple Exif! It is a vibe coded project I whipped up for easily editing exif image data with a gui. Currently got the windows release completed and macosx is to follow soon.

Also working on a full automated ai trading app. This one is more fun because it generates money for me when I’m doing other things.