Vibe-coded slop is horribly insecure and the dev doesn't understand the codebase?
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this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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I can't believe they banned that user for calling them out.
Thry sound like arrseholes
I’m desperate for a community driven review system for open source. We’re drowning in vibe-coded slop, and I honestly don't have the time or a good slop detector to audit every tool I download. I know I should be checking under the hood, but the sheer volume of low-quality projects makes it impossible to keep up
This is what good distros do, well some of them, I don't think low touch repos like AUR/Homebrew/PPA's would catch this, but I doubt huntarr will ever make it to Debian.
Ofc the trend of running upstream unverted containers undermines this.
Sounds like the solution would be a public code sharing platform that specifically bans AI generated code. Then, at least, we’re moving in the right direction. Do any alts to GitHub provide such a rule?
It doesn’t need to be perfect nor catch every offender. No need for magic AI-coded detection sauce. If it just detected slop, human or otherwise, and obviously AI-written code, with a reporting mechanism for user-driven monitoring, that could be a good start
But, should we worry about it being a source for AI companies to scrape? How should we deter that?
I saw a project yesterday where the two main contributors were some guy and 'Claude'. So, y'know, that one at least was an easy tell 😂
You're here, that's a good start...
I tend to look at a project's Issues tracker, that gives me a feel for how the author(s) deal with feedback... some projects have hundreds of open tickets with barely any interactions, yet code updates "2 days ago".
Being here and reading about who's using what will help remove the major outliers
All opensource needs more eyeballs, which is still the advantage over closed source.
There are projects turning issues to discussions
Sometimes it's really easy, open a bunch of code files and see if it's littered witb comments. If it is: likely sloppified
From the original thread, I bring forth this comment from user sdrmme:
Huntarr2
Too good not to share.
******** ?
Not sure what you mean. I just saw asterisks.
Holy shit you unlocked a hidden memory I forget existed. Thank you.
What do you mean?, I don't get what he/she is talking about.
"If you type your password, it automatically gets filters into asterisks. For example, my password is ********!"
Someone believed this. His password was hunter2.
What is/was huntarr? I love posts without any context.
Seems to be some sort of a tool that scans your media library and fetches missing media (the one that failed to download or something)
I am getting very annoyed reading "What is Huntarr?", "The Real Problem: Why You Need Huntarr" and "Understanding the Gap Problem". Am I too non-native english speaker to understand it or is it really the same 3 paraphrased paragraphs?
As the code was vibecoded, I guess that landing page was also llm generated, that could be the reason for the duplicate sections.
I'd never heard of it either before deed diving on this, and I'm thankful i hadn't heard of it. Ugh. Fuck AI.
I guess it was supposed to be a successor to the *arr stack (radarr, lidarr , sonarr, etc). If you’re not familiar, they automate the downloading & organization process for movies, music, and tv.
I'm sure a successor will come around when room forms for them, I don't know of a reason any of the core *arr stack should need one. If you know of one don't hesitate to share, I'm just not really aware of any, they are awesome to me.
Personally I hate that sonarr is stuck on thetvdb when plex/jellyfin both primarily use tmdb. Usually it's fine but for certain shows the differences can be unreconcilable.
I've been eyeballing https://github.com/maxdorninger/MediaManager but haven't gotten around to it yet
Maybe it is a necessary evil...
I always get into problems with old shows/anime when I stick with Plex's tmdb... If I switch to tvdb all my issues are gone.
There was no reason for this in the first place in my opinion. The ONLY positive use I can see would be managing the whole arr stack from one place, but I imagine you would still need to manage individual shows\movies\whathaveyou if it wasn't found in the first place.
I have my stacks set up to auto upgrade and find missing stuff already. It's literally built into their programming. I manage them individually and anything that isn't found on my indexers I typically go out and find manually as needed (old or very obscure media).
Not really sure what this bought anyone at all other than an extra layer of convenience?
And Seerr will kinda manage at least Radarr and Sonarr requests for you. I barely touch those now that they're configured. I did always find it odd that Sonarr and Radarr were separate apps. Lidarr and Readarr I could see.
I believe it was supposed to monitor your jellyfin library and look for potential upgrades.
But Sonarr and Radarr already do that.
Not really, it doesn't fetch missing episodes or old content if you did a custom formats modification afterwards.
I never used Huntarr, only upgradinatorr though.
So just recyclarr?
I don't run 'arr anything, but that's pretty wild.
Yeesh, in the hour since this has been posted the developer has:
- Made the /r/huntarr subreddit private
- Wiped and deleted their Reddit account
- Deleted the GitHub repo for Huntarr
Looks like Huntarr's presence on Github is suddenly gone and their sub went private.
I'm not so much worried about 'vibe coding' as long as the dev actually knows the validity of the code presented in the LLM. At that point, the LLM becomes the assistant, not the dev itself. However, if I were to speculate, this dev team didn't, got called on it, didn't know how to respond or validate the code, so they closed up shop.
The term 'vibe coding' I think was originally about generating and using code without understanding it
Well, I have used LLM to do code for in house type stuff. Very simple. In that scenario, it's fairly good. I've found that LLM are good at compose files for instance. But that's much different than producing a piece of software for thousands of people to use with confidence. Especially when dealing with anything 'arr and the mitigation that takes place to operate that in a secure, private, and anonymous manner.
Yeah doesn’t sound like vibe coding if you actually go through the necessary dances anyway, i.e double-check the produced code and validate it and actually understand it and the domain.
Edit: But almost nobody does. Because then you’d rather just write it yourself and save time, money and energy…
Exposing any of the Arr stack to the internet is just bad practice in general IMO but bad actors will always be out there so it's even more of a reason to practice good security.
I used huntarr for a minute and found it utterly useless. Didn't trigger searches like it said it was doing. Uninstalled it after about 5 minutes.
That is some wild shit. Anyways for anyone else somewhat new to all this: when hosting anything, try to stick to reputable projects 1st and be always wary of shady installation tactics (I believe yesterday someone posted about curl bash. This is just a single example). If you want to try something new (as in brand new project), try it isolated 1st on some VM (proxmox helps a lot with this). When you are confident and more people give an approval, then think about putting on the main environment
try to stick to reputable projects 1st and be always wary of shady installation tactics
One of the first things I look for are longevity, last updated/activity, and then I look at the issues posted and responses. I like mature apps because I don't possess the intelligence to audit code.
The huntarr project released a new docker image 3 times a day…
So that takes care of the 'last updated/acticity' portion of the trifecta. How about longevity and issues posted and responses. I really know very little about the project as 'arr apps aren't my bag.
Hey friend, don't undersell yourself. You do possess the intelligence, but maybe just not the skills.
Well, you're very kind. I do know some coding, as in basic stuff. I can get around as it were. Most of it was learned from manually typing in pages of code from outlets like Byte magazine (zoom in) only to find out when you went to run the program, that you left out a semicolon on line # 5362 and a errant indent on line # 9241.
Hah, yes that's also how I remember my childhood. But I never was good at it, though I became a good software project manager instead which works well for me using Claude now. I count that as a win.
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The fact we need to vet self hosted products from vibe coding is very disappointing. Like isn't part of the point security through sovereignty?
Wow i literally just setup huntarr last night. Guess ill make sure its only accessible on wireguard.
This developed further. Better be done with it and stay safe. Read the linked reddit thread for info.
How so?
Vibe dev literally deleted the GitHub, the reddit and his accounts after being called out.
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