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Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

AI Usage Policy

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

4 Prevalent Themes in the Discussion

1. Need for AI-Assisted Workflows and Transcript Archiving

Many users see AI interaction history as a crucial part of the development process itself, requiring new tools for preservation.

  • simonw: "For me it's increasingly the work. I spend more time in Claude Code going back and forth with the agent than I do in my text editor hacking on the code by hand. Those transcripts ARE the work I've been doing."
  • simonw: "That's why I want the transcript that shows the prompts AND the responses. The prompts alone have little value. The overall conversation shows me exactly what I did, what the agent did and the end result."
  • fragmede: "It's so others can see how you arrived to the code that was generated. They can learn better prompting for themselves from it, and also how you think."

2. The Human Responsibility for AI-Generated Code

There is a strong consensus that AI tools do not absolve developers of responsibility for the quality and correctness of code, whether for personal use or contribution.

  • arjunbajaj: "AI generated code does not substitute human thinking, testing, and clean up/rewrite."
  • epolanski: "If your teammates are producing slop, that's a human and professional problem and these people should be fired. If you use the tool correctly, it can help you a lot... Any person with a brain can clearly see the huge benefit of these tools, but also the great danger of not reviewing their output line by line."
  • cmsj: "The marketing is irrelevant. The AIs are not aware of what they are doing, or motivated in the ways humans are."

3. Loss of Trust and Rise of "Slop" from Low-Quality Contributors

The ease of generating code has led to a flood of low-effort, often incorrect pull requests from inexperienced or shameless individuals, straining open-source maintainers.

  • vegabook: "Ultimately what's happening here is AI is undermining trust in remote contributions, and in new code... I'm already ultra vigilant for any github repo that is not already well established."
  • Version467: "The biggest surprise to me with all this low-quality contribution spam is how little shame people apparently have."
  • CrociDB: "I recently had to do a similar policy for my TUI feed reader, after getting some AI slop spammy PRs... The fact that some people will straight up lie after submitting you a PR with lots of that type of comment in the middle of the code is baffling!"

4. Concerns Over Legal Ambiguity and Reputational Risk

Users are worried about unresolved copyright issues for AI-generated code and see explicit contribution policies as a necessary defense for projects and a filter against bad actors.

  • nutjob2: "A factor that people have not considered is that the copyright status of AI generated text is not settled law and precedent or new law may retroactively change the copyright status of a whole project."
  • Lucasoato: "You need to protect your attention as much as you can, it's becoming the new currency."
  • wpietri: "This is explicitly public ridicule. The penalty isn't just feeling shamed. It's reputational harm, immortalized via Google... One of the theorized reasons for junk AI submissions is reputation boosting. So maybe this will help."

🚀 Project Ideas

AI Contribution Transcript Inspector

Summary

  • [A tool that automatically generates and attaches detailed, sanitized session transcripts to every pull request created with AI assistance.]
  • [Solves the pain point of maintainers needing to understand the AI-assisted development process for review and learning, without forcing contributors to manually manage sensitive data.]
  • [Core value: Provides verifiable transparency for AI-generated contributions, enabling better code review, onboarding, and knowledge transfer.]

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Open-source maintainers reviewing AI-generated PRs, teams using AI coding tools, and contributors wanting to document their process.
Core Feature Automatically capture, redact credentials, and attach full AI coding session transcripts (prompts, responses, user edits) as a GitHub/GitLab check or comment.
Tech Stack GitHub App/CLI, Node.js/Python, LLM provider APIs (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.), regex-based secret detection (e.g., gitleaks).
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: Freemium model (free for public repos, paid for private/enterprise teams with advanced redaction and audit logs).

Notes

  • [Addresses the core need expressed by simonw ("Those transcripts ARE the work") and jakozaur ("I want to see full session transcripts, but we don't have enough tool support").]
  • [Directly solves the pain point of manual transcript management mentioned by cxrpx ("I need to redact credentials") and radarsat1 ("eventually I realized I don't really get much value from doing so" due to friction).]
  • [Practical utility: Aids in debugging, understanding code intent, and improving team prompting skills, as noted by fragmede ("They can learn better prompting for themselves") and awesan ("it will help you to be skeptical... look at those more closely").]

AI Slop Detector & Triage Bot

Summary

  • [A bot that automatically analyzes incoming GitHub/GitLab pull requests to flag and score low-quality "AI slop" contributions, providing maintainers with a pre-emptive risk assessment.]
  • [Solves the overwhelming flood of low-effort AI-generated PRs that waste maintainer time and create review fatigue.]
  • [Core value: Filters out contribution spam before a human has to look at it, allowing maintainers to focus on genuine, well-intentioned contributions.]

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Maintainers of popular open-source projects facing high volumes of external contributions (e.g., Ghostty, curl, Zulip).
Core Feature Analyzes PR diffs, description, and commit history for common AI-slop patterns (e.g., excessive verbosity, incorrect assumptions, mismatched styles, trivial changes) and assigns a "slop score" with evidence.
Tech Stack GitHub/GitLab Webhooks, Python, LLM-based classifiers or heuristic analysis (e.g., regex for AI boilerplate), existing static analysis tools.
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: SaaS bot with a free tier for small projects and a per-repo subscription for larger, high-traffic projects.

Notes

  • [Directly addresses the problem described by multiple users like Ronsenshi ("massive PRs and now also these agent prompts") and verdverm ("not for you... It's so others can see").]
  • [Supports the policy enforcement needs expressed in the Ghostty AI policy discussion, where maintainer arjunbajaj notes it "acts as a filter to separate your PR which you have taken the responsibility for."]
  • [High practical utility for maintainers like alya at Zulip who feel "draining" interaction with AI slop, allowing them to "spend our time mentoring people"].

AI-First Pull Request Template & Guideline Generator

Summary

  • [A tool that automatically generates a context-aware AI usage policy and PR template for a specific open-source project, based on its codebase, history, and community standards.]
  • [Solves the need for custom AI policies as one-size-fits-all rules (like the Ghostty policy) don't work for every project's culture or domain.]
  • [Core value: Democratizes the creation of clear, project-specific guidelines for AI-assisted contributions, reducing ambiguity and friction for contributors and maintainers. |
Key Value
Target Audience Open-source project maintainers, especially those without dedicated community managers or clear contributing guidelines.
Core Feature Analyzes the project's README, LICENSE, CODE_OF_CONDUCT, and recent PRs to generate a tailored "AI Usage Policy" snippet and a customized PR template.
Tech Stack Python, LLM API, GitHub API to fetch repository data, templating engine (Jinja, Mustache).
Difficulty Low
Monetization Hobby: An open-source tool or GitHub Action. Could be a free feature of a larger platform like GitHub itself.

Notes

  • [Reflects the sentiment from fzaninotto: "I agree this could be a template that services like GitHub should propose".]
  • [Helps projects adapt the principles discussed, like ottaah's point about balancing responsibility and openness, by providing a starting framework.]
  • [Practical for reducing maintainer burden as noted by dawnerd, who needs a "guide for our own internal AI guideline" to manage contractor code quality.]

AI Contribution Context Aggregator

Summary

  • [A service that links AI-generated PRs to their originating issue, discussion thread, or Jira ticket, creating a "contribution chain" for full traceability.]
  • [Solves the disconnect between the AI-assisted coding process and the broader project planning/communication, which empath75 on a team discussed ("attaching claude transcripts to jira tickets").]
  • [Core value: Provides a holistic view of why an AI generated code a certain way by connecting it to the human-issued task and requirements, aiding in review and future maintenance. |
Key Value
Target Audience Professional development teams using Jira/Linear/GitHub Issues alongside AI coding agents, and open-source projects with formal issue trackers.
Core Feature Automatically associates a PR (and its optional transcript) with the issue it resolves, pulling in the original ticket description, comments, and requirements into the PR review context.
Tech Stack GitHub/GitLab/Jira APIs, Python/Node.js, webhooks for automation, optional browser extension for enriched PR view.
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: SaaS product with per-seat pricing for teams, integrating with common project management tools.

Notes

  • [Directly implements the workflow described by empath75: "On our team, we have discussed attaching claude transcripts to jira tickets, not github PRs".]
  • [Addresses the "why" question raised by radarsat1 ("why does it matter what you did?") by linking it to the original, human-verified task definition.]
  • [Practical utility for review, as noted by couchdb_ouchdb: "You should be able to attach the plan file that you and Claude develop in Plan mode... This should be the source of truth".]

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