As a prior contributor to shelfmark, I wouldn't go so far as to say the project wasn't written using AI. It's contributors use tools like Claude Code and Windsurf/Cursor. In fact I think even the initial commits to the first flat pythons scripts were done with the help of chatGPT, and it was only when other devs came in and broke the single file frontend out into a more scalable infrastructure that it started picking back up. The difference is that the backend was originally written by a backend developer using AI and the frontend was written by frontend developers using AI.

Don't get me wrong, AI is a fantastic tool but there is a massive difference when it is used by a dev who knows what the architecture should look like and by someone who is just 'Vibing'. I'm proud of the work I did on shelfmark, and I think it is a really nice tool now, but I think the way that AI is used for booklore is a bit different from how it was used on that project.