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Lots of people seem to care about whether a project was built by hand over time by a few committed developers, or if it was vibe-coded in the past week by a sin

by Semkas 16d ago

Lots of people seem to care about whether a project was built by hand over time by a few committed developers, or if it was vibe-coded in the past week by a single person. Whether the distinction matters or not, it would be nice for everyone involved if projects falling into the second category were more upfront about that.

yitchelle 16d ago
As a matter of interest, would seeing a full disclosure that vibe coding was used sway your decision one way or the other?
- Citizen_Lame 16d ago
  Due to security and future updates, yes.
- matsemann 16d ago
  Yes, a project maintained and built over longer time has a bigger chance of staying relevant, than someone's weekend fun they will abandon once the dopamine hit of "making something" wears off.
  - slowin 16d ago
    Isn't software written by hand more likely to be abandoned due to the extremely costly nature of keeping its development going? Abandonware definitely existed prior to vibe coding. As long as it's open source, now you can pick it up and keep vibe-developing it if you care to, for very little money/effort.
    - fluidcruft 15d ago
      Possibly, but sunk costs fallacy often means it's possible to rely on the maintainer to stick around. I think we all know how disposable LLM-generated code can be. If I wanted to vibe code my own thing, I'd do it my way rather than fork an abandoned project. What's needed is more of a nexus thing where there's evidence multiple people work together or some long track record of someone scratching a very specific itch. Or if we're all using agents to build the same thing some way for them to team up. It's a sort of proof of life thing and it's difficult to distinguish those from flashes in the pan.
      - snazz 15d ago
        Rather than sunk cost fallacy, I would call it survivorship bias: the projects that someone has consistently worked on over time are a small fraction of the total projects out there, and those that have survived are probably useful to someone (at the very least, their developers).
- Semkas 16d ago
  I'm not sure what decision you're talking about. My comment just mentions that it would be convenient if disclosure of vibe-coding was more common. I can look for myself and see that the repo was started a week ago and has had hundreds of commits since, and that the author exclusively talks about ai on twitter. I'd just like it if I could save myself some time, and it would prevent useless discussions in this thread were people argue whether the commit-messages look like ai.
- bodge5000 16d ago
  I'll admit to having some bias against vibe coding, but trying to put that aside I think it depends on the purpose of the project. If it attempts to be an improvement over existing software then absolutely yes it would, things like speed, performance, security and reliability are not something I'd trust vibe coding for. If its for doing something novel where the previously mentioned is less of the focus, I can imagine myself looking past that, sure.
- IshKebab 16d ago
  It would save time from having to figure out that myself.
crossroadsguy 16d ago
I don't think it's needed or a fair ask. Even though project clearly shows one of the contributors as Claude. There are excellent AI assisted software out there and shite software "crafted" by bare fist and knuckles violently banging a mechanical keyboard in a glorious hacker dungeon. When I commit I either mark it as my own commit if I've read through every line of that commit at least once (not skimmed), pushed back, changed, etc, or put as "ai@<a word I use>" if it was mostly "fine, do it…" or the "whatever… " phase. I never let AI write a single word of documentation or comment. And I made sure Claude removed its attribution the first time I started using it. Besides I was using GLM 5.2 at that time so Claude was not a fit anyway. I don't think they should have that default behaviour.

by Semkas 16d ago

yitchelle 16d ago

As a matter of interest, would seeing a full disclosure that vibe coding was used sway your decision one way or the other?

Citizen_Lame 16d ago
Due to security and future updates, yes.
matsemann 16d ago
Yes, a project maintained and built over longer time has a bigger chance of staying relevant, than someone's weekend fun they will abandon once the dopamine hit of "making something" wears off.
- slowin 16d ago
  Isn't software written by hand more likely to be abandoned due to the extremely costly nature of keeping its development going? Abandonware definitely existed prior to vibe coding. As long as it's open source, now you can pick it up and keep vibe-developing it if you care to, for very little money/effort.
  - fluidcruft 15d ago
    Possibly, but sunk costs fallacy often means it's possible to rely on the maintainer to stick around. I think we all know how disposable LLM-generated code can be. If I wanted to vibe code my own thing, I'd do it my way rather than fork an abandoned project. What's needed is more of a nexus thing where there's evidence multiple people work together or some long track record of someone scratching a very specific itch. Or if we're all using agents to build the same thing some way for them to team up. It's a sort of proof of life thing and it's difficult to distinguish those from flashes in the pan.
    - snazz 15d ago
      Rather than sunk cost fallacy, I would call it survivorship bias: the projects that someone has consistently worked on over time are a small fraction of the total projects out there, and those that have survived are probably useful to someone (at the very least, their developers).
Semkas 16d ago
I'm not sure what decision you're talking about. My comment just mentions that it would be convenient if disclosure of vibe-coding was more common. I can look for myself and see that the repo was started a week ago and has had hundreds of commits since, and that the author exclusively talks about ai on twitter. I'd just like it if I could save myself some time, and it would prevent useless discussions in this thread were people argue whether the commit-messages look like ai.
bodge5000 16d ago
I'll admit to having some bias against vibe coding, but trying to put that aside I think it depends on the purpose of the project. If it attempts to be an improvement over existing software then absolutely yes it would, things like speed, performance, security and reliability are not something I'd trust vibe coding for. If its for doing something novel where the previously mentioned is less of the focus, I can imagine myself looking past that, sure.
IshKebab 16d ago
It would save time from having to figure out that myself.

crossroadsguy 16d ago

I don't think it's needed or a fair ask. Even though project clearly shows one of the contributors as Claude. There are excellent AI assisted software out there and shite software "crafted" by bare fist and knuckles violently banging a mechanical keyboard in a glorious hacker dungeon. When I commit I either mark it as my own commit if I've read through every line of that commit at least once (not skimmed), pushed back, changed, etc, or put as "ai@<a word I use>" if it was mostly "fine, do it…" or the "whatever… " phase. I never let AI write a single word of documentation or comment. And I made sure Claude removed its attribution the first time I started using it. Besides I was using GLM 5.2 at that time so Claude was not a fit anyway. I don't think they should have that default behaviour.