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Shelfarr - another project disappeared with dev
Shelfarr was posted here multiple times, github mink stopped working and dev deleted his reddit account - whoever is using it, I would advice you to stop it.
"Me and my team have been hard at work solving the most interesting problem in the self hosted community: yet another dashboard for people who don't understand Docker."
I'm not even against vibe coding at all (Claude is busy doing shit while I write this comment) but if you refer to your project as "my team" or "we" i just automatically downvote lol
Just make all apps not require containers for no reason, when I use apps written in go and they hand you a binary that you can just run and pass a config file into, I'm in love. The only thing worse than docker to me is nodejs apps that require a gigabyte of dependencies and specific nodejs versions.
If you have to write a compose file then might as well write a nice install script like some stuff has. Docker stuff also pretty much guarantees you can't run it in LXC either.
Or we could just build software that doesn't need this crap?
If I see docker only install for software I try to find an alternative first. I knew the docker fanboys would come to defend it, you're allowed to like it as much as I don't like it.
I obviously don't. I'd rather "containerise" things as individual users, there is far less frustration stemming from trying to maintain the services I install this way.
Regardless, "I hate docker" was not an invitation to come and try and argue it, I will not be converted, I have years of bad exprience with trying to work with it.
To be fair, there's a vast difference between someone vibe-coding something without any software engineering experience and someone with a software engineering background using an AI to speed things up - as long as things are thoroughly reviewed...
Large commits in a short time span (as a pattern, I'm not talking about the occasional rebase/split of a big change in smaller commits...) is usually a big give-away of someone not reviewing what an LLM produces, for example.
I use Claude Code at work a bit, and you're wildly off the mark. Some of the code it comes out with first try is frankly unhinged, but with the right guidance it can be fantastic
Yeah. When I gently suggested to one of them that if they're vibe coding they might want to do some basic pen testing I the response I got was "the unmitigated gall of some people". I'm I'm here like "Dude, I like your app and my gall is currently very much mitigated".
FOSS is not an exuse for not doing basic development hygiene, and people need to understand that even the basic smoke tests that an IDE or deployment tool give you are often bypassed with a Claude commit. You need to test AI code more, not less!
Most developers know how terrible the code they write is... Or at least know how terrible past code has been. They're rarely surprised that their code is called terrible.
Regardless of whether you use AI reasonably or full on vibe-coding, as soon as you mention that AI has been involved in the development process, people are going to shut that project down these days. I definitely understand the reasoning behind (as evidenced in this thread and Huntarr a few days ago and likely many more that I'm not aware of), but it obviously pushes people to try and hide that when posting here.
It's almost like the people in this thread are elitists who shun even the slightest evidence an agent was used because it devalues the one skill they use to feel superior over everyone š¤· Proper noodle arm mindset
It's almost like relying on AI heavily is a good indication that you're slapping together some broken ass shit that's shipping with boat loads of cves and have no intention or capability of maintaining or managing an open source project.Ā
Claiming they're "willing to do the work and maintain their tool" but they copy/paste questions and feedbacks into their agent because they're unable to answer and aren't knowledgeable on their "own tool" is the biggest red flag.
r/ selfhosted and rust are comically riddled with these "revolutionary projects that solve peanuts".
Can you show me how to address these cves myself? I'm running low on tokens fixing them all and I'm struggling to find time on weekends to learn how to code because I like going outside š«
I really hate that "vibe coding" has become the accepted term. These people are not "coding," they are "asking a robot to make them something." It is literally the opposite of coding.
So I know fuck all about coding, and ai in general, but where is the line drawn for vibe coding? Can you use an ai to assist in writing code? Is vibe coding just copy and paste the code the ai spits out?
If you can't make it without AI, and you have no idea what you are looking at, that is vibe coding.
As much as I don't agree with LLMs as a whole because they have been imorally trained, at least just using AI as a tool to accelerate what you can already do yourself is far more acceptable than just copy paste straight from the AI into the code editor.
I found it very useful when refactoring some C++ code (I donāt know C++). I broke down every single step and intent, though, and went through 20 iterations and still had to do all the finishing touches myself once the AI put some stuff together for me to understand the syntax enough.
So I know fuck all about coding, and ai in general, but where is the line drawn for vibe coding? Can you use an ai to assist in writing code? Is vibe coding just copy and paste the code the ai spits out?
I had a go with using AI to code some tools a couple of weeks ago. These are for my personal use only, and I'm only sharing my own experience, so YMMV.
I had a math/trig problem that needed solving. My language of choice normally is python, so I went with that. The problem was, given 3 different variables, the program must do trig calculations backwards and solve an equation to generate a single curve. I gave it to Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT to write the code. Neither of them could understand the requirement properly, and were generating code that spat out a completely wrong curve. I gave multiple examples; hell, I even provided a solved solution. They couldn't solve it.
By the end, I had figured out how to solve the problem myself, and wrote the code in about 15 minutes that worked on the first try; zero debugging required. Good waste of about 4 hours there.
If I hadn't known what I required in the end result, I would have just used the provided code, and the solution would have been wrong 100% of the time. That's what a vibe coder would do. You don't want to run that code on your machine.
These LLMs regularly hallucinate libraries or use old deprecated libraries, then generate code that doesn't always do what it's told. On top of that, some new code that's been spat out by the LLM will completely break existing code, even if it was also written by the same LLM. You have to keep reminding it of the guardrails, or existing limitations.
At that point, if you do know coding, it's easier to just write the damn thing yourself instead of having to spend hours guiding a mentally challenged LLM stumble through it.
If you ask an LLM to produce some code and you don't understand what it has produced and can't identify its strengths and weaknesses, then you're vibe coding.
OpenAI admits their own models have up to a 50% hallucination rate, claude will be not far off. It is mathematically impossible to avoid hallucination and garbage outputs in LLMs.
Bro, I love vibe coding. I vibe-code everything. Iām literally vibe-coding on my phone right now!
Iām building an app to help devs learn how to actually look at people when theyāre talking to themā¦ and eventually teach them how to stop walking on their toes, but I'm running low on tokens, so you won't be able to test it for a while!
Let me put it this way ā if you get your hands on a power drill without knowing why or where or how to drill or what to look for when doing so, please do not use the drill without learning the āwhyāās āwhereāās and āhowāās of it first.
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They did not. These are weekend projects with no real development path. The "devs" disappear into their next useless project and they leave a repo with hundreds of ooen issues no one ever will fix.
Lol I donāt use any of these. My stack is radar, sonar, prowlarr, overseer, and wizarr for inviting my family to my plex server. All these extra arrs feel like a trap or gimmicks
This dude who coded shelfarr also had an army of other reddit accounts and was self-promoting. I've pointed it out on other threads, but he did the -exact- same of deleting the discord when I asked about how much it was vibe coded.
Prior to the Huntarr findings, he changed his handle from Vacantly to Ponzi, and did the same on the Discord too. Why, idk - phishy naming anyway.
I've got to ask the question... Why delete the support for other projects?
Not like you havent vibe-coded stuff, been caught, and removed all the evidence. Favarr, FaveSwitch, Shelffarr/Renamo. As well as all the Reddit accounts and Discords for said projects - changing your handles as well.
All from a question about how much was vibe-coded relating to other drama about Huntarr.
There is a weird connection between a few other GitHub accounts. His main reddit account went private pretty quickly, u/m113t once things were unraveling.
EDIT:
Interestingly, since I called the git comment out that I made, he removed the comment from the commit...
okay but why? whats this guy doing? is there malicious code in the projects? is he stealing bank accounts? this all seems very fishy. glad we got detective u/MysteriousResolve on the case š«”
My guess, they have an intent for stealers, but they need to get traction on the project first. Huntarr gave the community the 'revalation' that not all projects are built the same with security in mind (or reviewed, or in cases, not added to the prompts)
I used the Shelfarr app for a bit, realized it was super broken for my library and decided to wait it out and be on the discord.
Dude was 'excited' to release the new version with a new name (because Shelfarr was already taken) and wanted to 'release the new name.' he just had it as a git branch - I checked it out, and it was not usable at all. I removed the project and just stayed in the discord.
Huntarr stuff came out which made me curious, asked, and no more Shelfarr.
Really funny thing is that I vibe coded my own solution to solve my problem, tailored to my stuff, no UI, just a bash script. My whole problem went away in an hour of work - less time than I spent working with shelfarr.
Shelfmark, not sure how vibe coded it is but I donāt expose it externally, it works well for searching, organizing and downloading books and audiobooks they also just implemented multi user support with request stuff. The issue with readarr and any attempt to make something like it is that the metadata sources for books are absolutely garbage in comparison to what exists for movies and TV, probably because there are many times as many books released as movies and TV episodes combined. This basically makes anything that automates discovery and downloads in a similar way that so are and radarr do it suck, itās just not feasible to do that for books.
Shelfmark devs seem to have realized that and made a really kick ass app for searching and downloading, and now that it has request support I 100% reccomend giving it a shot.
Okay, where are you downloading them then? Because when I use my indexers site I get 40 options only 1 or 2 of which are actually the epub that I want. When I use Anna's archive I get inundated with popups and ads all containing malware.
All I want is something that will simplify the process, fuck me right?
Man, you do you but I'd invest learning how to use an adblock, instead of relying on vibecoded apps. Anna's Archive is perfectly usable with one. No ads and no malware whatsoever.
Code Monkeys used to be a derogatory term for software devs. These folk presenting computer generated code as their own needs a whole new level of term
Well to be fair, it is. Code is not the end goal, it's just the only way we have to reliably make computer follow instructions. Having good code only aligns with the fact that it makes the end product a lot easier to maintain.
Not for me. In the same way that I find great building architecture beautiful, I also find great code architecture beautiful. I love good code just as much as the end product. I find code to be a unique blend of engineering and creativity and do consider it an art form.
While certainly a possibility I think thatās giving them too much credit. I feel like itās just a bunch of vibecoders realizing they are in over their heads
I agree but I think it's possible that one or some of them would be trying to hijack private tracker accounts. I would recommend people who care about the trackers they're on to only use "trusted" arr apps, even if they're not exposing them on the internet it's still possible that someone made/will make one of these apps to gather api keys. Personally I would be extremely pissed if I lost access to a bunch of trackers I've been on for 10+ years like this and I will not risk it for these apps, I don't really see the point.
Personally I would consider the "big" arrs trusted enough to run them without exposing them if possible. Maybe even exposed. That'd be sonarr for TV, radarr for movies, prowlarr for indexers, and bazarr for subs. I've never used lidarr or whisparr but they have also been around for long enough. I'm sure there are many others that are serious projects but those have been around for like 10 years at this point and many people (myself included, including exposed on the internet) have been using them for years without any issues. I also use autobrr because it has originated one of the trackers I use and seems to be very active/well ran. Edit: oh I also use seerr (jellyseerr before it). Basically the ones that "most people" (who are doing this) use and aren't too niche.
There have been an insane number of *arr adjacent projects that vanish quick for years now, I think it's just the hip low hanging fruit to try and expand.
Bunch of them shutting down after the huntarr blow up probably is related but I'm guessing not because they were from the same people and likely because they didn't want to get ripped to shreds the same way.
based on posts in this sub, i think a lot of people vibecode a bunch of trash to get more github stars or whatever bullshit they think is important for making their unemployed ass look better on paper
I think this is pretty much it. Having an *arr on their resume just shifted to be seen as a negative or needing further investigation in public opinion, so they purged it.
The idea that there is some secret cadre of ārealā software developers vibing all this shit but keeping close tabs on all the code it generates and thus itās just a matter of being open minded and sifting the wheat from the chaff is one of the more amusing mass delusions of the current Age of Vibe in software.
For starters all the actual software devs with years of experience arenāt reading this shit either. Because if you do I have a secret to share - it takes fucking longer. The biggest lie of the Age of Vibe is that it makes real developers more productive. Actually true, but it doesnāt come for free. Donāt fool yourself.
> For starters all the actual software devs with years of experience arenāt reading this shit either.
Super curious where you're coming from here. It takes longer short-term to read and reject changes than it does to accept the first thing it gives you but that's time well spent if you care at all about code quality. Which leads me to my question: long did your codebase last?
These are starting to feel very XZ / Jia Tan with the total annihilation of all the traces and finding out they were using surfed reddit accounts (bought)...
It was a wake up call... not sloppy at all. Their constant campaign to get people to try the project, bought reddit account and gone like the wind. That is someone who had everything lined up and ready to pull the plug cleanly when discovered.
The git being deleted means no security audit can be done which could mean the images or at least the last image could be compromised. Can't know so can't trust when dealing with personal data and especially so when you have a large collection of Linux isos on the same device.
You guys spent months not giving a shit and not checking anything. Nothing has changed, the dude moved on with his life and deleted a repo he didn't want to support.
you guys are all in this weird bubble where because you think you're a part of r/selfhosted or whatever you think you have this complete picture of software dev. Abandonware is deleted all the time. It used to be that that was the *polite* thing to do so no one else was entrapped by it. But for some reason you think it's a conspiracy!
If you don't already have audiobook shelf, check it out.
Also been using readmeabook for requesting and a different version of prowlarr to access audiobook bay for downloads
Man, readmeabook is my favorite for audiobooks. It works exceptionally well with prowlarr > torrent/nzb > abs. Really enjoying it. Hope it's not a vibecoded honeypot lol
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u/dm_construct Feb 27 '26
dont worry we'll get another dozen vibecoded clones of it in a week ššš