[Meta] Rule proposal: no personal projects newer than 3 months (anti-vibecoder rule)
Posted by turdas@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 226 comments
Recently open source subreddits have started seeing a large number of vibecoded personal projects that look novel or useful on the surface, but in reality represent one weekend of prompting by the vibecoder.
At best these are benign novelties that maybe get a bunch of unwarranted upvotes but don't really harm anyone. At worst they're unaudited, poorly designed garbage software that looks impressive at a glance, tricking people into installing it on their computers, which will at best lead to some frustration and wasted time and at worst to -DGAPING_SECURITY_HOLE.
Because these projects take basically no investment on the author's part, they tend to quickly become abandonware as the author's interest wanes or as they become frustrated with the currently inevitable technical debt reckless vibecoding produces. As a result, projects like this are of negative worth to the open source community.
Naturally, these people almost never disclose that they vibecoded their project.
The rule proposal
The proposal is simple. Expand the current self-promotion rule to forbid all personal projects under 3 months old. The project's age would most easily be proven by a public git repository with 3+ months of commit history. Probably we should also forbid closed-source personal projects, but that's a separate discussion.
This works because 90% of problematic slop projects are made by attention-seeking people who want to make something cool and show it to other people, and most importantly don't want to spend a lot of time or effort doing it. If the developer has stuck with the project for three months, it's likely either not vibecoded in the first place (because real projects take time), or the author is dedicated enough that it being vibecoded isn't automatically a massive problem.
I've seen rules like this in a few communities and they seem to work pretty well.
purpleidea@reddit
I agree with this, and TBQH I remove low quality posts that feel like slop or submissions of stuff that I don't think is very interesting as well.
Helmic@reddit
I think the main problem - it being a burden on people who aren't submitting slop - can be mitigated by providing exemptions for people with previous AI-free projects that meet the rule, on the logic that such people actually know how to code and don't need to vibecode. It's really people with fresh accounts for whom we need this sort of onerous heuristic, once someone is relatively established I think that narrows it down to a manageable number of posts to review. I don't think many people with years of contributions to notable projects are making these slop posts.
klyith@reddit
The rule is about the project age, not the poster's account. So if linus torvalds himself does a slop project (and he did), it would still be removed until it gets 3 months of history.
IMO this is a pretty good rule even when applied to non-slop projects. Just because the code is all hand-crafted organically sourced with no AI doesn't mean the person who made it is gonna stick to their project.
Helmic@reddit
I am talking about project age, but making an exemption for people who have other projects that would pass muster. And we do not have a problem with people flooding the sub with non-vibecoded projects, so it isn't a priority to block those submissions.
rebellioninmypants@reddit
The person doesn't always have to stick to a project. It can be finished in a month or less, and from there only require minimal maintenance every year or so, which can often be handled by any contributor.
klyith@reddit
true, but:
they can wait for the 3 month age and then post if they want
TBQH anything that's a simple one-and-done weekend project that needs no ongoing effort is also probably not worth posting here
Artichoke808@reddit
Thanks for your service, Sir. It is appreciated.
VexingRaven@reddit
Oh, cool, love to see mods admitting they're just deleting stuff based on personal interest.
onceuponalilykiss@reddit
That's quite literally what moderators on reddit do. Every subreddit you like is there because they just had moderators with good taste, lol.
OscarHI04@reddit
If you are unable to create a project on your own, it means you have a total of 0 skills and, therefore, your product will be garbage. If someone isn't good at programming, they should accept it and either learn to be good at it or simply accept that it's not for them. AI only serves to increase mediocrity.
Best-Impression2077@reddit
God forbid a quality sub that isn't dying cause of an overload of lazy one liners and the 100th wrapper script for something.
DustyAsh69@reddit
Hope this rule is implemented. Please add a report reason too.
redoubt515@reddit
I'd agree with both of these rules (no projects with < 3 month commit history, and no closed source personal project showcases (advertisement)
SuspiciousSegfault@reddit
How do you enforce that? Git commits can be trivially backdated, probably in a single prompt.
forresthopkinsa@reddit
GitHub public APIs show the actual push dates
Gugalcrom123@reddit
What if I don't use GitHub?
james_pic@reddit
I'm pretty sure CodeBerg and GitLab and Heptapod and stuff also include commit dates. And my guess would be that 99.9% of vibecoders are using GitHub anyway.
The only open source projects I've come across that don't have a public version control repo are super old projects that have been serving tarballs from a
.edudomain since 1996.Gugalcrom123@reddit
What if I self-host?
pietervdvn@reddit
I'm giving you an upvote for this being an honest question.
james_pic@reddit
I might end up eating my words here, but my assumption is that vibe coders won't do any of that, so anyone who's bothering to do that probably isn't a vibe coder.
GitHub project created yesterday with 200 commits and 10,000 lines of code. Probably slop. Anything else (project with reasonable history, project using esoteric VCS, project hosted on Geocities, project hosted on Raspberry Pi surreptitiously hidden under Ricky Martin's jacuzzi), probably not slop.
LayotFctor@reddit
Isn't it precisely the gamified UI of Github and it's attractiveness as a portfolio that attracts people to pump their portfolios with slop?
I can't imagine a vibecoder with no real interest in development, bothering to park their slop on gitea or something. No starts, no followers, no contribution calendar, no achievements, why do they even care?
Gugalcrom123@reddit
Probably.
scandii@reddit
which is just the date the branch was synced to remote which says close to nothing about the development of the project.
especially when you consider that many people squash to remove their iterative development practices and push clean commits.
forresthopkinsa@reddit
But it does provide an upper bound for how recent the development could have possibly happened, which is really the point here. It's a figure that can't be backdated.
PJBthefirst@reddit
What? That's not an upper bound. Imagine I started developing a tool in a new, local git repo in January, then in March I decide to create a github repo to host it, then I push my repo state there
Wouldn't this be indistinguishable from someone who created a project in March, with backdated commit histories?
Aendrin@reddit
Yes, it would be indistinguishable. But come June, either way you know that work started in March at the latest. Upper bound on recency / lower bound on age is a pretty reasonable way to phrase it.
PJBthefirst@reddit
Yep I agree that it puts a lower bound on the project's age.
CrazyKilla15@reddit
Huh, it does? How/where?
MyNameIs-Anthony@reddit
The people doing this sort of stuff don't usually have the technical acumen to do it properly.
Go look up how many companies have lost their repos and backups to these LLM agents.
Even small barriers can be large if you don't know how to use a ladder.
Quirky-Reputation-89@reddit
Everyone and everywhere should ban non foss software lol
scandii@reddit
I mean, that's how I and millions of industry professionals pay the bills. not sure you genuinely thought this one through.
Gugalcrom123@reddit
It is not the only way, there are also:
I am not saying that proprietary software should be banned, but that it is not the only way, and that if they want advertising they should pay for it, given that they already make a lot of money.
CrazyKilla15@reddit
did you know you can sell FOSS software
Infinity-of-Thoughts@reddit
Did you know that most FOSS software don't really hold a candle to it's paid proprietary counterpart?
If you're going to pay for something, you want the best.
Chicken/egg problem: No one is going to pay for worse software, but then the FOSS devs can't actually put time into it, and thus it will never get better.
And I don't understand where your argument about compiling software fits in.
Quirky-Reputation-89@reddit
It is still possible to gain income building foss. But I did probably go too far, I think custom stuff for businesses with specific features and whatnot makes sense as closed source paid software, but I'm referring to just end user stuff, DAWs, word processors, streaming platforms, etc, should all be open source.
Mother-Pride-Fest@reddit
Yes, but we shouldn't give free advertising. If exploitative proprietary software wants more users it needs to at least pay up.
clearlybreghldalzee@reddit
Good luck. Your grandma doctor can't see her blood result now.
mina86ng@reddit
That’s already a rule, no?
littleman11186@reddit
Won't people just include their brainstorming into the project age? Or are we using hard verifyable GitHub repo first commit?
corruptbytes@reddit
vibe coded slop is like dreams, they're special to you, but no one wants to listen to you talk about them
i love my CLI's I've vibe coded but i'd be scared to show them around
FeepingCreature@reddit
personally, I vibecode a ton of things but they mostly solve extremely specific problems I have. like, does anyone else want a homeassistant integration for zfs? a bridge day calculator? a bad openscad clone that can do smooth transitions? a web music player that can do basically one thing, and that's correctly play tta/cue folders? those solved problems I had at the time. other people will have other problems.
turdas@reddit (OP)
Appendix: How to spot vibecoded projects
Here's some patterns I've personally noticed. Feel free to share yours.
FeepingCreature@reddit
Why would you do that? The AI needs it! The whole point of that folder is external memory. If you remove this folder from the repo you're either very confident in your backups or do not understand the point.
MarkSuckerZerg@reddit
Just check .got ignore. there's either .claude/ or .MD with Readme.md exception
nicman24@reddit
i mean at this point if they want to make anything proper that other people can help with, providing the mds might be better
MarkSuckerZerg@reddit
Yeah that baffles me too. There is specific type of grifters who believe LLMs will get infinitely better, but somehow they will always need some special promoting knowledge that's worth keeping secret
LaughingwaterYT@reddit
I have seen .gemini too, in general just look for any LLM's name
nicman24@reddit
enterprise is either 10 pages long or
PROJECT NAME
project name
arainone@reddit
Somebody should definitely vibecode a tool that checks for these rules. Testing is easy,if at any point the tool fails to identify itself then it's not working
Jonrrrs@reddit
A tool like this could be reverse engineered by the vibe coders so theyr hiding skill of slop increases and we in turn have to come up with more advanced techniqs. This could lead to a never ending arms race
Far_Collection1661@reddit
"Initial commit" with a +5000 diff (weak evidence, as some humans do this too)
I personally finish my projects before uploading, so I do this one commonly
// TODO, then again, I have terrible memory and stay up until 4AM+ coding (on LARGE projects), so it helps me remember what still needs doing, what's unfinished, etcJonrrrs@reddit
My TODO file is the project itself. I sprinkle TODO comments everywhere and also have a script that counts them and puts the count in my nvim statusline to not loose track.
ryecurious@reddit
Ugh, this is emdashes and bullet points all over again. I don't want to stop, so I guess I just have to live with some people thinking I am/use AI.
General_Session_4450@reddit
While my projects are in the "ideation" phase, it's just a long stream of "fix", "more", "remove", "add" commit messages with no structure. Once I'm happy with the direction of the project I'll just delete the whole .git directory and reset it with initial commit and go from there. I don't have time to worry about commits before I even know if the project will be around after the end of the week.
turdas@reddit (OP)
I don't usually initialize the repo until I have a skeleton of a project ready either, but my initial commit is typically like +500 lines and not the +5000 vibecoders have.
ryecurious@reddit
Fair, but you gotta scale it by language/build tools for it to be a useful rule of thumb.
+5000 for a Python CLI? Highly suspicious, should investigate further.
+5000 for a Vite + React app? Wouldn't bat an eye, the
package-lock.jsonfrom running a basic setup command can be >3000 lines by itself.stankmut@reddit
Yeah, sometimes I forget to initialize the git repo until the very end of the first day starting a project. I'd say about 97% of my 'initial commit' commits are like that.
detroitmatt@reddit
I don't think the goal should be banning ai code completely, just holding it to a level of quality and reducing the flood of weekend-then-abandoned projects.
Pandoras_Fox@reddit
from the op:
I think their take is spot-on. I think, largely, the issue is a lack of maintenance or design in the projects. It used to far less of a problem before the advent of AI-accelerated projects.
TuxTool@reddit
Ehh... i bet if you hold a vote, "Ban AI code" would win and it would be a net positive. I know I'd prefer it banned.
crazy_penguin86@reddit
Weird files/folders in a gitignore. For example:
build/.randomperson_a1@reddit
I use .gitignore templates for my decidedly human projects. Much easier than checking git status by hand all the time for what I don't want to commit.
crazy_penguin86@reddit
I mean, yeah I do as well. But I'm talking about stuff like
Templates also don't tend to contain extension specific folders like
.planningunless it's ubiquitous.DustyAsh69@reddit
Comments in the code are one way to check as well. Excessive comments explaining basic things.
scandii@reddit
fun fact! Clean Code (came out 18 years ago) argued that comments should explain why and not how.
the idea that AI is the only thing writing pointless comments (where do you think it got it from?) is funny to me.
that said I've yet to see an ASCII comment that wasn't AI-generated e.g. // --- Comment ---- over // Comment
jbourne71@reddit
Agreed.
Bl4ckb100d@reddit
and whatever this is: "—"
jbourne71@reddit
Hey! I use the em-dash—it’s a very versatile punctuation mark.
AliceCode@reddit
Just use a hyphen, it's less suspicious.
jbourne71@reddit
I refuse to abandon the em-dash because the unwashed masses can’t handle a real human on the internet.
AliceCode@reddit
Okay, then don't complain when people accuse you of being AI.
FryBoyter@reddit
Yes, accusing. That’s exactly the problem. These days, people are being accused without any solid evidence. And things like em dashes aren’t evidence, since they’re just standard punctuation marks.
AliceCode@reddit
They aren't standard, they aren't on standard English keyboards. You have to go out of your way to create them.
jbourne71@reddit
You must be a hoot at parties.
AliceCode@reddit
I don't go to parties. I'm a programmer.
ChaiTRex@reddit
No way! Why should I change? AI's the one who sucks.
jbourne71@reddit
AI does such.
siraprem@reddit
I hate emojis so much, I think they are so cringe
rustyrazorblade@reddit
Perfectly reasonable. Love it.
rebellioninmypants@reddit
It has more flaws than you think.
DarksideFur@reddit
My only worry is that this will weed out simple projects that can genuinely be built in less time. Simple weekend hobby type stuff that is notable enough to deserve a post, but that doesn't take 3 months of dev time. Will there be an exemption for this type of project?
rebellioninmypants@reddit
Right? That, and they don't necessarily need that much maintaining often, which makes the abandonware concern also not apply.
heja229@reddit
I think for now the idea is great and can really help. However, as some people pointed out that the timestamp on git commits can be forged. Maybe we can also take the repo age into account. Can one see when a git repo was created?
rebellioninmypants@reddit
See, this is how scope creep happens. The original idea was weeding out ai slop, so start with filtering out accounts created within the last 2 years. Then just apply a basic "Has this had at least x commits within a span of y days" policy - nothing more, nothing less. Adding concerns like "is this abandonware" or "can we be sure that the maintainer will still maintain it 999 years down the line" is overreaching and outside of the original scope.
rebellioninmypants@reddit
I would recommend checking github account age/contributions count. Apply this rule to anyone who created their account within the past 3 years
hantzv@reddit
I'm for banning slop, but yall should be careful to not make it even harder to share projects on this sub. I have a several years old project that I couldn't share here when it reached 1.0 precisely because I haven't gotten enough attention on reddit and on this sub (karma threshold).
I would also look if whoever is posting has other projects actively maintained for a long enough time, even if the one being posted is recent.
Leprecon@reddit
I hate this about them so much. People who use AI almost always lie about using AI. It is like it is a dirty secret. I don’t think there is anything wrong with using AI, but like you said it does cause certain issues that people might want to be aware of.
siraprem@reddit
Even if you say it and you have a giant disclaimer in bold and capital letters people will hate you anyways. Like the extremists exists, here too. Tbh I know people that if they know someone has used IA and they have a gun... Well, you know. Is horrible to compare to minorities but this just remembers me to gays before 80's at this point. People will likely do the same thing they did with gay people before just because they hate IA so much
mftrhu@reddit
No, it's ridiculous. Being discriminated as an AI user involves people telling you off. Being discriminated as an LGBT+ person, especially before the eighties, involves so much more than "mean words" that the comparison sounds like mockery, even when knowing it likely comes out of a deep well of ignorance.
siraprem@reddit
You're right, the comparison was unfortunate and disrespectful. I apologize. My point was simply to show how violent the hatred of AI has become in people's imaginations, but it shouldn't have been equitable.
turdas@reddit (OP)
I had a guy block me yesterday for pointing out that his project was AI.
A large part of these problematic Reddit vibecoders are pretty obviously teenagers or otherwise very immature IRL, which explains why they try so hard to hide the fact that they're using AI; they're probably taught at school that it's cheating, and they know that nobody would be impressed if they knew that the project took nothing more than two afternoons of prompting to create from scratch.
I don't think there's anything wrong with using AI either (I use it myself regularly), but there are definitely bad ways of using it and this is one of them.
PocketStationMonk@reddit
Whatever that needs to be done to keep the slopgates tight and closed.
bingblangblong@reddit
Well that sentence was just needlessly arousing.
JockstrapCummies@reddit
I'd rather be aroused by nerdy wordplay than AI generated porn.
OkBrilliant8092@reddit
Rawwwwr
coyote_of_the_month@reddit
"Slopgates" was my nickname in high school.
Artemis-Arrow-795@reddit
do I wanna know the story behind it?
1vim@reddit
Three months is fair. Real projects survive longer than a weekend of prompting.
nozendk@reddit
Yes, I have vibe coded a project, and of course I think it is great, but I am not sure if I should bother anyone else with it.
gringer@reddit
A lot of comments in this thread:
I would like to point out that people are used to nuance, and can handle small deviations from the rules. It's far better to do something and patch up the actual problems when they happen, rather than doing nothing because of hypothetical situations that might occur.
siraprem@reddit
Just censor any type of AI and 100% of problems solved like what bad thing that could do?
gringer@reddit
Or...
Sure, you can add comments like this into the mix as well.
boar-b-que@reddit
Something I worry about with rules like this is that they open the door to 'Report as AI-slop' becoming the new 'Super-downvote'. "I don't like this. I don't like this person. They must be AI, so I'll report them as such. Take that, you loser!"
Not allowing code repos younger than 3 months is a good black and white binary and that I can get behind. However, a code repo older than three months is STILL going to be vulnerable to vote brigading, requiring more effort on the part of the sub's mods to filter wheat from chaff.
I've already personally been victim to such here in /r/linux. I wrote professionally for a while, and apparently that's colored my writing style to sound like a soulless bot.
siraprem@reddit
Welcome to the witch hunt era of r/linux! Thinking of it now it remember me to the real witch hunts by the church. Like saying someone's is a witch by "feels like a witch" and then get you know... I think is just funny
GigaHelio@reddit
Dude I'm so brain rotted I thought this was about meta not letting employees work on personal projects
Jonrrrs@reddit
Posts with disclaimers should be excepted from this rule. This way one not interested in ai slop can simply skip the post. We also train people to disclaim elswhere as well.
siraprem@reddit
It doesn't matter, here no one likes even IA assisted code. Even if they see something uses IA the will be dropping a lot of hate to the OP. People will start doing things (they already did/do) like doxx OPs just because they use IA on their projects, and that affects the subreddit, because reddit mods will likely see it and say "this sub is a factory of doxxing people just bcs they don't have rules and properly moderation" and then the sub will be nuked.
Actually the most possible thing are two
Is very extreme I know, but sadly people don't know how to control themselves. Is like a LGBT+ sub where there is no rule of no homophobia. You know what is going to happen... And even that I don't know if 1 solution will be really a solution because the will likely pursuit OP to other subs or even out of reddit
FryBoyter@reddit
That's true in theory. But in practice, it doesn't work. These days, many users just can't ignore certain things.
I bet that even with your disclaimer, people will still leave comments about how evil chatbots are. Or that the project is “vibe coded.”
unixmachine@reddit
I disagree, I think that's utter nonsense. Weekend projects existed even before the AI boom. Abandoned open-source projects are the most common.
Let people post, it's up to the user to decide if it's worthwhile or not.
This type of restriction is completely anti-freedom.
siraprem@reddit
You are getting downvotes by the elitism of Linux, funny
PracticalPersonality@reddit
"This subreddit has been banned for being unmoderated."
What you're advocating for is a complete lack of moderation. Moderation is required for a subreddit to function, and if you consider it to be anti-freedom, do the open source thing and start your own subreddit and see what happens.
siraprem@reddit
Now that the community is so eager to get rid of AI, I propose a minimum project age of one year, a certificate that can only be obtained if you prove that none of your projects use AI, a committee of 20 judges to review whether a project uses AI or not, and that if the OP is found guilty, the post is removed and the person is banned /s
Bachihani@reddit
I agree
slowopop@reddit
Very good idea!
PM_ME_YOUR_REPO@reddit
Stealing this for r/Admincraft.
Financial_Owl2289@reddit
agreed! 3+ months shows commitment, which is somewhat the antithesis of vibeslop. For example, I had to leave r/CLI because there's no more decent projects; there's nothing there but vibecoded slop anymore.
turdas@reddit (OP)
Oh man, I opened the first post on that sub, and the author literally has a markdown file in his repo where Claude wrote three variants of his Reddit post for him: https://github.com/matthart1983/syswatch/blob/main/LAUNCH_DRAFT.md
_thedex_@reddit
omfg. It even proposed on which subtest Subreddit to post...
Kok_Nikol@reddit
Deleted lmao - https://github.com/matthart1983/syswatch/commit/9bf58027054ac60927466b2b18e863f416e595cf
LaughingwaterYT@reddit
That's insanely embarrassing, thank you for banning these projects btw, they plague subreddits like no tomorrow, hoping other subs follow suit
PJBthefirst@reddit
That's so bloody shameless
CrackedP0t@reddit
Jesus Christ. that's depressing
PentagonUnpadded@reddit
I agree with the energy, but a full quarter is too long in my opinion. Can it be set at general purpose 2 months, or one month IF the author used ZERO ai in the creation process?
I feel you'd catch the almost the same number of slop posts with a shorter rule and a zero ai exception. Three months is 13 weekends - imo too much time before getting feedback.
ungoogleable@reddit
This sub shouldn't be the first and only place you seek feedback. If you can't find anybody interested in trying your project after three months, that's probably not a good sign, even if you didn't use AI.
Plus, litigating whether a project counts as "zero AI" or not isn't worth anybody's time.
PentagonUnpadded@reddit
Three months is a long time in software. I don't want this to be an 'evergreen only' sub. Companies routinely announce changes and shutdowns 60, even 30 days in advance.
throwawayPzaFm@reddit
Yep, way too long. Especially in this agentic era where time really has very little to do with maturity.
AliceCode@reddit
I tend to not work for projects for three months straight. So what if I work on a project for one week, then pause, then three months later work on it for another week? Would that count?
Or do I need to commit for 90 days total?
mykesx@reddit
LOL. Me too. Sort that sub by newest threads and it's a wall of spam, like you see on some unmoderated message section of a blog.
TuxTool@reddit
Yeesh, what a slop-ridden sub. Such a shame that it's in THAT sub and not in r/CLISlop or something 🙄
jglenn9k@reddit
What, you don't wanna see my json2png cli tool?
Kidev@reddit
Buutt... it's written in Rust :( You sure sure?
heja229@reddit
Uff didn’t know that sub. The idea sounded great but after taking a look, it’s just bad, so many slop software
nicman24@reddit
if it does not have at least one commit message with obscenities it is out
lowlife4lief@reddit
Maybe you should stop installing every random software posted here just because it seems "impressive at first glance," before you come to rant about how vibe coded software is bad, and proposing genius ideas like tracking development time as if it correlates with value of the product.
Bans and forbidding stuff is inherently against the word free.
TuxTool@reddit
The signal to noise ratio is getting ridiculous in this sub. Something has to be done to keep AI slop out of this sub. If people really want to "show off" their "app", go to an AI appropriate sub. No one here is clamoring for vibecoded garbage.
VexingRaven@reddit
And if it's not vibe coded but is new, then where do you go?
Far_Collection1661@reddit
I like the reason but hate the conclusion. I personally develop my projects in private then when they're finished I'll open source them, I just don't like uploading unfinished code mainly, and it harms LITERALLY nobody other than the real legit developers who aren't allowed to show off their projects until they've sat for 3 months and atp, unless it's an unfinished project, it's completely been forgotten about. And the vibecoders can just modify the git history to say it was made 3 months ago
FryBoyter@reddit
That would apply to me as well. When I release code, I only do so once the project has reached a certain level of maturity. Before that, development would take place locally. And I would only release the code at that stage of development. That’s because there’s simply too much “trial and error” involved beforehand, which I don’t want to make public.
FryBoyter@reddit
Which, in a way, I can understand. Because no matter how they’ve used chatbots, it’s always interpreted negatively. Even if, for example, the chatbot code was thoroughly reviewed manually before it was released.
Why three months? Why not one month? Or a year?
I bet there are also projects that are abandoned after less than three months and don't contain any chatbot code.
Why isn't chatbot code a problem after three months, but it is before that?
In my opinion, there are certainly projects that use chatbots which are fully committed to the project from the start and, for example, manually review the code beforehand.
Likewise, there are projects created manually whose code quality doesn’t even come close to that of chatbots. Mine would be one such example. So why not ban these “low-quality projects” as well?
Yes, “vibe coding” results in some pretty terrible code being published. But thanks to “artificial intelligence,” for example, several major security vulnerabilities that had existed for years have recently been discovered. So it’s not just black or white, good or evil. There’s a whole spectrum in between.
That’s why, in my opinion, projects should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Regardless of whether they were created using chatbots or manually.
zoharel@reddit
I don't know, man, I knocked out an assembler for 8-bit CPUs in a Borne, in a couple weeks, a while back. Yes, without assistance from an LLM. Yes, it's a bit rough, for multiple reasons. Does the things, though. Would it be far better after three months of solid (as it was) work? Maybe not, again, for multiple reasons. Anyway, the point is that you probably won't just turn away vibe coders with this rule.
Gugalcrom123@reddit
This is a very good idea, but I am not sure how to handle self-hosted git which should not be banned outright. There is web.archive.org, maybe that can be used.
First_Result_1166@reddit
Nice idea, and while I'd like to get rid of all that AI slop, git commit dates are under total control of the corresponding user and easily modified (git commit --date "10 day ago").
turdas@reddit (OP)
Yeah this is true, the commit history could be faked. Currently most vibecoders probably don't know how to do that, but it could become a problem in the future.
First_Result_1166@reddit
So, we'd be relying upon the stupidity of the vibecoders. Not perfect, but maybe better than nothing.
To enforce such a rule, a mod would need to actively check the promoted github repo. Not sure if they'd be open to doing this.
Gugalcrom123@reddit
What if it isn't on GitHub?
turdas@reddit (OP)
In part yes, but faking the commit history only works once. If you're actively developing the project you'll have to make new commits, and backdating those is harder and more easily detected. Particularly if you're making 100+ commits per day like many vibecoders do.
nullsetnil@reddit
Discussing all of this openly we are giving instructions how to best circumvent detection, it’s counterproductive. E.g. they can simply instruct the LLM to change the commit dates now. In my opinion best thing to do is to demand declaration of use of LLMs and to tag such topics accordingly. Delete undeclared slop, ban offending accounts from sub.
Far_Collection1661@reddit
"@grok how do I set my git commit date?"
edgan@reddit
This is a bad rule, and is very shortsighted. This issue will more naturally work itself out. You would be better off requiring flare. Even then it is a half-ass measure, because you are just encouraging people to hide/lie.
fellipec@reddit
Agree. Not only against vibecode but against things people do on a whim and never maintain past the first weeks of hype.
scandii@reddit
the mentality that FOSS developers should consign themselves to free perpetual labour for the rest of their lives the moment they release any software even if the license clearly states "RELEASED AS IS NO UPDATES PROMISED" never ceases to amaze me.
Flash_Kat25@reddit
No one is saying they have to do that, But if the project is abandonware, then there's not much point in allowing it to be promoted here.
fellipec@reddit
I love the internet.
I say "I like pineapples" and people come to you "Why you hate straberries"?
giomjava@reddit
I don't understand what's the issue.
This could be an absolute boon, a renaissance for open-source software, if people were to band together and knock out new software or features in days instead of months or years.
I've been hearing "boo hoo, we don't have enough resources" in Linux / open-source software world ever since I've "joined" the ecosystem in 2007.
Well, now you DO. Some projects can be very promising, and what matters is -- does the software WORK? Is the idea GOOD?
If yes -- join and contribute. Found out that the code lacks in security? Jump in and fix it.
Found out some issue in the documentation? Well, people made mistake ALL THE TIME too. Found errors in the code? they're usually called bugs. Jump in AMD contribute.
Today, a team of TWO DEVS can achieve more in shorter time than a team 5 just a few years ago.
Use this to our advantage. We've always had bugs in OSS, always lack of some important tool, or GUI for a tools.
Don't want to delegate important parts of a tool to LLM? OK, give it the ROUTINE and BORING part -- mocking up a GUI, writing documentation.
Don't want to allow LLM to contribute to the Linux Kernel? FAIR ENOUGH 👍
Throwing out baby with the bathwater is plain silly.
USE THE TOOLS TO OUR ADVANTAGE.
Traditional_Hat3506@reddit
The point is to make maintainable software. Having 3 chatbots run wild in 20+ year old codebases only to leave them in a state where nobody fully understands is meaningless. It will be good short term but useless on the long term, especially when the current maintainers retire.
Let's not "move fast and break things".
Desktop linux and its ties to libre software licenses would also need to compromise on ideology and allow models trained on incompatible code to 'dirty' them.
This sounds more of an AD for anthropic, begging we destroy our codebases so we depend on their solutions forever.
turdas@reddit (OP)
AI can be used well, but the people posting vibeslop on Reddit are generally not using it well. A complicated GUI app shat out in a couple of days with virtually no human oversight of the code is not the renaissance of open-source software, it's pure noise.
giomjava@reddit
Yes, and the sword cuts both ways. (TM)
Artichoke808@reddit
Yeah I agree get that slop cleaned up.
wickedplayer494@reddit
I'd support this, only thing is, what stops somebody from bullshitting 3 months worth of Git pushes offline before putting their repo up?
Far_Collection1661@reddit
Happy cake day! Also they can literally change their git history to say it was made 3 months ago. MicroSoft did this when they open-sourced MS BASIC to make Github say it was uploaded 35 years ago before git even existed
AmarildoJr@reddit
This is great but I wonder if we can improve it a little bit.
For most vibe-coded projects you basically just have the owner upload the entire thing in one huge commit, no history or anything. This new rule can be bypassed by just doing that (uploading everything in one commit) and leaving it for 3 months before posting. And there are many AI slop projects older than 3 months too.
Could I suggest we add one bit extra? That the project must have been updated more than X times in the past 3 months also, otherwise it's a dead project and the owner has no intention of maintaining it.
- if it's a new project, be older than 3 months;
- if it's between 3 and 12 months, it needs to be active and have an active history;
andrei9669@reddit
I was about to write, couldn't you just rebase the git history and edit it to be whatever tho?
Far_Collection1661@reddit
Exactly
giomjava@reddit
That's more reasonable than what I've seen in other comments 🙏 make sure it's not abandomware.
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
Now that's at least a little commitment :)
billFoldDog@reddit
Its a good idea.
aliendude5300@reddit
Good fucking riddance. AI agents have made it so easy to slop together and then forget about a project.
rebbsitor@reddit
I agree with the premise, but this is a trivial rule to game. Simply make project, and wait 3 months to post it. Someone can vibecode a project every weekend and have a backlog to post every week if they want.
Add in trivial commits every week to show activity.
TuxTool@reddit
True, it needs to be probably more scrutinized. This sub needs to start somewhere, and it's not a bad start. I agree, it should be stricter. Or ban the poster if they circumvent the rules.
AliceCode@reddit
Why don't we just scrutinize whether or not the project is LLM written? I don't typically work on a project for three months. I wouldn't even be able to post my projects. Three months is a long time to be working on something. 1 month is a lot more reasonable.
just-a-hriday@reddit
Something definitely needs to be done about all the low-effort projects but I don't think this is the answer. This will have too much collateral damage.
I think total mod discretion to remove anything they interpret as low-effort should be good.
leonbollerup@reddit
Why?
TuxTool@reddit
To keep AI slop out of this sub like other subs have been doing. Take a look a sloppified sub like r/CLI . Shit's out of control there.
leonbollerup@reddit
Maybe I am missing it.. but are talking about who does not speak English natively that use AI for help or people will little development skills .. that now manage to build applications or tool… or is it people who use agentic tools to fix people and configure their Linux setup.
Who is we want to punish the typical arrogance that we within the Linux ecosystem/ community lows pushing on others…
digitalsignalperson@reddit
What about rebase/rewriting history? Can be legit or "hey claude make this project look like it's 5 years old" before pushing to github.
I've been working on some tools for a few years, not shared online yet, but not sure to what degree I'm comfortable sharing my "FML WHY AM I DOING THIS" 4am commit message history. Debating if I would want to just squash the whole history to one commit, or if curating the history for public consumption is worth the effort.
just-a-hriday@reddit
I think the whole point is to get rid of ultra-low-effort projects that people vibecode in a day and post for attention. Those people probably wouldn't go through all that effort.
MelioraXI@reddit
I don't have a good answer to this but whenever I've made private projects public and I don't want to show all the silly small commits I've done over weeks and months, I just squash it but it looks sort of bad, if I wanted other people's opinion/critic of my code
object57@reddit
Sounds good. Although 1.5 months git history seems sufficient.
Berny23@reddit
Great idea.
But man, these days I have to worry about either writing too little docs/comments or too many (and then getting accused of fucking "vibecoding"). Developing more-or-less high quality software by hand next to thousands of dumb, effortless "vibecoders" just sucks.
Just finished an audio project this week where I had to read the PipeWire C API docs a lot. It's so cryptic that even trying to research with AI does not really help. Would love to see these "vibecoders" try to generate this shit and fail miserably.
kombiwombi@reddit
Some projects ha e an element of timeliness, so they could be excluded. I'm think the libraries to scrape Covid statistics, or some responses to malware.
AalbatrossGuy@reddit
Pretty good idea! +1 from my side
Jmc_da_boss@reddit
I agree honestly, proof of work has to come from somewhere
markaction@reddit
This seems like an unnecessary thing to do. If you think something FOSS is sloppy or made in a weekend than take the code and make it better. That is the Linux way anywaya, not censoring a bunch odlf projects that may inspire someone else to do something better.
No thanks OP
TuxTool@reddit
No one is getting inspired by AI slop. This seems like a great way to keep the slop out. If people really up in arms about submitting their weekend code, start a sub like r/LinuxAIApps or something and sandbox it over there.
This is a great start and should be even stricter. Way too many low effort "I built a new" in this sub.
markaction@reddit
Yeah, because it is exactly as you say, 100% of the time. Everything is just crap. I get it. Nobody is ever inspired.
Substantial-Glass663@reddit
So are you telling me that mfs are vibecoding C/C++ project than js/ts, that then is true evolution of projects
MelioraXI@reddit
Making a file manager in js and electron
emfloured@reddit
[ Removed by Reddit ]
AVX_Instructor@reddit
vibecoding on Rust, fit better, then C/C++
Dzubrul@reddit
Eh, some tools don't need 3 month of development. I think the vibe coded projects are pretty oblivious.
OptimalAnywhere6282@reddit
i have a question
turdas@reddit (OP)
Why is your question on an external site?
Anyway, obviously there's degrees to it, but personally I consider anything that's practically entirely written by a coding agent to be vibecoded. This doesn't automatically make it bad software, but let's just say that far more bad software than good software is produced this way.
On the other hand if you just use an AI chatbot and copy-paste code from it, that's much less vibey because just by the nature of the interface, the AI can't really produce the entire program by itself and all code has to pass through the human (even if it is just copy-pasting) before making it in. Of course some people will disagree and consider this vibecoding as well, and I'm biased here because this is the predominant way I personally use AI-generated code.
The problem with coding agents is that they will generate hundreds if not thousands of lines of code in one go, and it is not easy to read and internalize that much code. Even for an experienced developer it will take hours (days, in complex cases) to really understand a program with a LoC in the thousands. If you AI generate the program piecemeal and step-by-step by using a chatbot rather than a coding agent, you will have a much better understanding of the resultant software.
OptimalAnywhere6282@reddit
it is my own website; and since i know this is a question i will ask frequently, i decided to make a blog post about it. so now i can refer to it from anywhere, as well as the ability to add additional content like responses or afterthoughts.
oh yeah, for the most part, i don't use agents >!(things like these are what i should add to the original question for more context, which is why it is on an external site)!<. i still use the (not so-)old-fashioned chatbots/websites.
Traditional_Hat3506@reddit
yes? why wouldn't it be? just because you mention a handful of libraries and some basic instructions, it doesn't make it less of a vibecoded project.
The idea many vibecoders have that they are different and better than the other sloppers just because they mention basic programming terms is silly.
You want to vibecode but also not be called a vibecoder, you can't have both.
PracticalPersonality@reddit
I don't think it will be effective enough on its own, but adding this rule will be a good start. I'll also say this is a great example of a small, reasonable change intended to improve the subreddit, and we can follow this example again in a few months when we need to weed out more AI garbage.
Ancient-Opinion9642@reddit
I disagree.. let them have their moment in the sun. In a year or five, the will be embarrassed and remove the project.
Do a code review on the project. And let the rest of see what is also poor code practices.
Just saying it has bad security is a cop out by you the reader. Just comment on what you mean and where in the code you would put the fix.
turdas@reddit (OP)
The sheer volume of these projects is unfortunately too much for any human reviewer to keep up with.
Ancient-Opinion9642@reddit
So very true. Everyone has their own specialty and interest. Those I'm interested in would be the only projects I would comment on.
mykesx@reddit
I want to add to all the points made by others that I completely agree with.
First, having a link here to anything will boost that site in search engine results.
Second, when I open my inbox and see an email about garbage with a link in it, it's spam.
Third, hiding the AI vibe coding and claiming that you made the code is a fraud. It also gives no credit to the people whose code is copied by the AI.
Fourth, programming is an art and programs are works of art. These slop projects are not made by an artisan or works of art.
Fifth, someone posts some ridiculously advanced bit of code and claims they did the work offline or in a private repo. Are you kidding me? Anyobe with the skills to make this advanced bit of programming surely should have minimal git fun.
Sixth, calling out the spammers only leads to bickering in the threads. Let's avoid it entirely.
I spend too much time already on Reddit - I don't need to spend half that time sifting through garbage.
Thanks tomthe moderators!
hysan@reddit
Because git commit dates are easily editable, the only way to really prove this is to require an external archive service timestamp of N - 3 months of the project as proof.
atomic1fire@reddit
TBH I feel like anything involving AI should probably just be recommended for AI specific subreddits unless there's a specific tangible link to the Linux ecosystem.
Mostly because I don't know who's doing AI stuff for karma or SEO and who's doing it because it's a genuine part of their workflow, and that kind of depth probably can't be easily discussed when the first reaction is an argument.
EternallyAries@reddit
Agree, I would rather not see VibeCoded programs in general, but with a 3 month life span, it would mean they are keeping the project on going. Vibecoded or not. So that would be a good thing.
etoastie@reddit
perfect, my archive of old abandoned projects can make its debut :D
OptimalAnywhere6282@reddit
same (github:jotalea/miscellaneous; there's tons of stuff in there)
MelioraXI@reddit
1000% yes please.
suborder-serpentes@reddit
This rule wouldn’t age well
TuxTool@reddit
How so?
nzfrio@reddit
Yes please. I've had a growing list of interesting projects to go back to, and today, I went back to them. Every single one of them was abandoned. The vibe machines make it so easy to go from zero to workable prototype, but the effort required to maintain attention is still the same (maybe even more, because you never bind with/understand the project like you normally would).
privinci@reddit
Add to 1 year to make sure!
alwayswatchyoursix@reddit
Hell yes. I'm sick and tired of these "I made a tool to do this thing that no one actually needs because 30 well-established tools out there already do it and are maintained" slop posts.
The vibe code epidemic needs to die already.
Hairy_Koala6474@reddit
Where can I vote?sign me up I would love this rule to be in place.
I would love this rule to be in place across all subs
Square_Attention8461@reddit
I'd rather see a tag / filter for this (and for closed source).
Or a day / megathread for these projects.
If someone deliberately circumvents the rules, temp ban / ban them.
I think most people are discovering capabilities that now have a lower barrier to entry. They're excited about it, they're solving some problem they have in ways that are novel to them. This should be encouraged.
A lot of small, interesting projects aren't going to require three months of commits.
I understand that the current general sentiment, "AI Bad", is very much in vogue right now. That's fine. But it shouldn't be the position from which decisions like these are made.
Supporting a culture of tinkerers and learners is worth the annoyance imo.
Also don't think the mods should have to investigate submissions for these criteria, and opening up the floor to witchhunters is a bad move.
mrkrag@reddit
💯
An1nterestingName@reddit
The issue this could present is if a project that was closed-source is open-sourced and squashed into one commit when doing so. Other than that, it does make sense.
detroitmatt@reddit
I like this a lot better than a general "no ai" ban, which even if it wasn't essentially unenforceable would still be misguided
op374t0r@reddit
i think this is fairly balanced approach to the issue so long as people dont get overly dick jumpy about things
mina86ng@reddit
That’s how I always interpreted rule 5: ‘Relevance to r/linux community / Promoting closed source applications over FOSS.’
E7ENTH@reddit
Vibecoding is cringe.
npisnotp@reddit
I think it's a great idea to separate the short-lived slop from reliable software.
NighthawkFoo@reddit
Sounds like a great idea to me.
Drakkinstorm@reddit
How about: everything that's not written in rust and doesn't use anything other than std is not allowed.
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
Can we start with one month please?
kjodle@reddit
I agree. The amount of AI slopware out there is getting absurd.
Jarngreipr9@reddit
I agree but I also suggest that each project should include: - LLM use disclaimer (if, when, where and for what it was used) - plans to maintain/update the software - who and where it was tested
mistahspecs@reddit
Yes please. I've already left most programming related subs and I'm on the verge of leaving this one. The posts are so overwhelmingly trash that I'm now surprised when something is a legitimate post that the author actually understands.
_11_@reddit
That's a great idea!