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- Hacker News
- He did the right thing. The very idea of Claude copying an existing project to answer one of my prompts or a whole project in Claude Code is a nightmare scenario.
I have all but given up using the multiple trillion weight models in favor of smaller open weight models that have hopefully abstracted away copyrightable details. Right now deepseek-v4-flash-0731 seems usually perfect for my needs.
I saw Cees de Groot post about LLM vibe coded projects containing all sorts of licensed material, and I think he is correct.
Perhaps another good reason to just use the AGPL for new projects? I decided to use the AGPL for may latest fun project https://github.com/mark-watson/racket-coding-agent (personal AI coding harness written for my own use in Racket Scheme). Everything I do is open source or open content books, so I am happy to have everything I do to be used by humans and also for AI training, however: it is scary to by mistake be in the position of not acknowledging other work when appropriate.
- I cannot fathom so thoroughly torching your own reputation (a quite positive one at that) in such a short period of timeby joshuat
- I’d love to see the other repo, and the prompts that led to both.
Did Godier copy the other guy’s repo, name and all, and try to pass it off as his own work? That seems like the obvious conclusion, albeit brazen to the point of insanity.
Did Claude copy the repo, in response to a prompt? If Claude copies a Claude vibe-coded project, can any plagiarism really be said to have taken place?
Or is this just what Claude is statistically likely to spit out if you prompt it to build an astronomy app and leave it to it?
by mechanicum - It's not much of a mea culpa when there's not even a mention, let alone an apology, for misleading John Gruber.by cube00
- Fun and useful PR jargon to describe what this post smells like: a “limited hangout”.
(a damage-control strategy where an organization or individual admits to a portion of a secret or scandal after a cover story fails, while still hiding the most damaging key facts.)
by pohl - Yeah, the big bad AI made you plagiarize a whole project down to the name, and lie to everyone about the review process. Not buying any of it.by chuckadams
- Something went seriously wrong there, and I'm not sure it's just Claude copying an existing project bug-for-bug. For more context, see also this post from Gruber at Daring Fireball:
https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/retraction_app_store_reje...
- On the previous HN posts I got this impression:
The developer's astrology app containing tarot reading features was rejected from Apple's App Store that prohibits astrology apps.
He then replaced the app's content with a clone of, if not the identical open source astronomy app "Dark Hours", copying even the name. The original is here: https://darkhours.app
The developer was then in contact with John Gruber, who wrote an article claiming Apple's reviewers confuse a nice, scientific astronomy app with astrology. The developer reviewed the article before publication.
It then turned out that the developer forgot to mention that originally he did upload an astrology app for review. Gruber felt duped, and noted that it's unclear whether an updated build containing the new astronomy app was ever submitted to Apple for review: https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/retraction_app_store_reje...
Now the developer seems to claim that he merely accidentally cloned that open source app when working with Claude.
I am not buying it.
by user43928