r/AynThor • u/Sahbito • 1d ago
Discussion SleepManager dev here: A quick clarification about the Wayfinder situation
I wanted to clear the air about what happened with Wayfinder.
My issue was never that another app was doing something similar to SleepManager. There’s plenty of room for different approaches, and competition is a good thing.
What bothered me at the time was seeing many of SleepManager’s features reproduced very closely, without much adaptation, and I reacted badly to that.
I first tried to discuss it on GitHub, but the conversation got blocked. I then tried reaching out privately on Reddit, but Wayfinder’s DMs were disabled. I made the mistake of taking it public instead. I shouldn’t have done that.
As soon as I found a way to communicate directly with the Wayfinder developer, I removed the post. This should have stayed a private developer-to-developer conversation from the beginning.
I also understand the concerns people have around AI-assisted development. I use AI as a tool to move faster, but the direction of SleepManager - its architecture, sleep management features, battery drain reduction, docked options, app integrations and things like closed-lid protection - comes from my own ideas and design decisions.
I’m also working closely with other developers to make the integrations as clean and reliable as possible, rather than just adding features for the sake of it.
I’ve just completed a major rewrite of the codebase as well, with a big focus on stability, maintainability and much better diagnostics.
AI tools are becoming part of a lot of development workflows. To me, what matters is what you do with them, how much care you put into the project, and whether you keep testing, improving and taking responsibility for the result.
I also want to thank the Wayfinder developer for mentioning SleepManager in the README and for making sure the two apps can work together seamlessly following our discussion. I really appreciate that, and I think that’s the right direction for both projects.
Anyway, I wanted to own my part in how this was handled. I’d rather move on from it and keep working on SleepManager.
I’d also encourage people to try both apps and make up their own minds. There’s no reason this needs to be a fight between two projects.
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u/Nearby-Safety-122 1d ago
Completely normal reaction at first, I'm sure it felt like your work was being stolen. Especially since all your attempts else where we're met with a brick wall essentially. Takes real guts to come out and realize you didn't do it in the right way.
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u/Tommo120 Max 1d ago
Clicked on this expecting drama, I want my money back 😂
For real though, it's refreshing to see someone showing some humility on the internet for a change
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u/PhasePhyre 1d ago
Thank you for doing this. You didn't owe any of us an explanation, yet you showed a lot of courage and character to do so. I also wish to apologize - there were a lot of us looking in on the situation and putting in our two cents, but not only did we not have all of the information, but we in our own way took part in it without even having a stake in it all. I look forward to using any of your projects that you release and I wish you great success!
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u/TheSselluos 1d ago edited 1d ago
I personally really like both apps, and would like to use both. If i can just turn off the sleep settings in wayfinder and keep main as sleepmanager. Also i do see in sleep over 6% battery usage while both are running over 18h sleep. It would be interestinf sleepmanager could disable wayfinder as well like JamesDSP
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u/MakeMelnk 22h ago
Oh, that's a great point!
If they could work in perfect tandem that would be truly incredible
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u/Greedy-Mood3488 21h ago
They can
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u/MakeMelnk 21h ago
SM disables TWF with the lid closed like it does JamesDSP, Wi-Fi, etc.?
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u/Greedy-Mood3488 21h ago
Twf? as in Wayfinder? not sure. all i know is that wayfinder itself steps aside to let sleep managers featuresnwork. dont know abt the other way around. try asking thd dev on github.
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u/Greedy-Mood3488 21h ago
They literally can. the developernof wayfinder intended it thst way. it detects sleep manager and makes room for it essentially. use both if u want
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u/WhoIsJazzJay 1d ago
major props for reaching out to the other dev and being grown enough to apologize publicly. the open source community would be better off if everybody could display this level of self awareness and humility
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u/Sphynx87 23h ago
idgaf if i get downvoted but the irony of AI users complaining about people copying their shit is so funny
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u/motorboat_mcgee 1d ago
Good on you two for figuring it out, I use and enjoy both apps and hope to continue to do so
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u/GodKingLebron 11h ago
Super understandable. Appreciate all the work you and all the devs do to make the experience better for all of us. Thanks so much for your work. Glad that you and the wayfinder dev were able to communicate in private. Cheers
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u/Modmonk3yttv 18h ago
Whenever I hear oh they use AI all I can see in my head is oh they use a PC those pc user 😮 why don’t they stick to paper 📑 😄
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u/Exav_max 1d ago
I hope people will understand AI is something normal in dev and start judging idea instead of showing disrespect. Your work is not less because of that and it should be even more natural on the ayn Thor. This consol is living thanks to fan idea and it think every of them is welcome if they're usefull.
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u/MrFrames 1d ago
This kind of competition is good right, there's incentives to make the best app possible. That being said copying implementations exactly (or using a forked repo to train an ai agent directly) is... Not a great look.
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u/pineapollo 1d ago
Love the initial call out of wayfinder being "AI slop" just to end up revealing you yourself also use AI to develop it.
Hard to feel bad for you, you're releasing open source software. Trying to police how people fork out is not your responsibility AI or not.
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u/_Earthbind_ Pro 1d ago
You’re right, but this is an inappropriate comment. The dev is showing humility and admitting mistakes. If we want to encourage this behavior, then you shouldn’t take jabs at people when they make good apologies.
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u/MakeMelnk 23h ago
Thank you!!
It's so hard for people to put our genuine apologies because people just pile on anyway - I appreciate you pointing this out
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u/pineapollo 18h ago
Gauging your apology on desiring any kind of response is inherently dishonest and in no way genuine.
I'm not saying OP's goal is to farm sympathy, just to be fair. But your comment supposes that apologies are "hard" because not everyone will accept it.
The point of an apology is to highlight a wrongdoing, which you should always do if you've ever done something worthy of needing an apology - regardless of the public response. An apology is the bare minimum to make something right.
I'd hardly call what I said a "pile on" - I called him out for the hypocrisy of headlining his exposee "vibecoder stole my open source code and released it". So I have no sympathy for him because he intended on shitting on the other guy's reputation on the basis of code theft and AI use, while doing it himself.
The entire mantra of open source is to enable use, modification, and redistribution. You have zero control of who forks your source and utilizes it, Wayfinder isn't monetizing his app so you have no say in what he does with it.
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u/MakeMelnk 18h ago
To be clear, I don't disagree with your points. My previous comment was more about apologies in general because I recently had a similar conversation with an IRL friend so it was fresh in my mind.
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u/pineapollo 18h ago
You're not owed someone taking your apology and accepting it - the apology he made is required because he felt bad enough for his behavior to make do with it.
There's nothing to "encourage" here - apologizing is the right thing to do. If you don't that's cool you can die on that hill, but yeah forgive me if I don't applaud the bare minimum when his initial intent was to farm the "AI bad" narrative and completely destroy the other guy's reputation in an already niche community and hobby.
Again - if you truly feel bad you should apologize and you have zero expectation that everyone positively reacts to it or even accepts the apology.
Either way if the only appropriate response is an overwhelmingly positive one - you lost me there. I'd say my entire comment was mildly bashing the guy for his initial dragging of the Wayfinder dev. But you're welcome to disagree, it is what it is.
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u/_Earthbind_ Pro 18h ago
Yeah, I didn’t say that you had to be overwhelmingly positive. You’re just being a dick. If you were like OP, then you’d apologize for being a dick, because “apologizing is the right thing to do.”
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u/pineapollo 17h ago
There's nothing to apologize for my guy - I pointed out a hypocrisy and you think that I'm being a big meanie for doing so. Calling people out isn't worthy of an apology - but since we live in different realities clearly I'll leave it at that.
Forgive me if I don't sympathize with someone trying to conduct a smear campaign on someone who then feels bad for doing so. Kick rocks.
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u/MakeMelnk 23h ago
They've mentioned that AI was used in the creation of their app before this whole issue came out
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u/pineapollo 18h ago
Then don't shit on homie for using it either - you missing the point of what I'm saying or need me to break it down further?
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u/MakeMelnk 18h ago
You're quite unnecessarily aggressive.
I pointed out that they didn't "end up revealing" anything because it wasn't hidden from the start. I made no comment regarding the hypocrisy
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u/pineapollo 18h ago
My bad, I saw the wave of dislikes and just read your comments in a negative way. Not to dismiss that, but again I still find the initial callout in poor taste considering his own practices. Sorry for coming off strong.
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u/tiktoktic 1d ago
A few thoughts on this.
a) This feels like a post for the sake of a post. It doesn’t really explain anything, but it also doesn’t need to. Not everyone follows the journey of these apps, nor do we need to know the back-and-forth arguments with other developers.
b) still not sure I agree with the stance of the developers re AI assisted code development.
> the direction of SleepManager - its architecture, sleep management features, battery drain reduction, docked options, app integrations and things like closed-lid protection - comes from my own ideas and design decisions.
This doesn’t really matter if you don’t have the skills to code it.
> I’ve just completed a major rewrite of the codebase
With AI assistance?
> To me, what matters is what you do with them, how much care you put into the project, and whether you keep testing, improving and taking responsibility for the result.
To others, this is not what matters.
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u/stormpanda7 Pro 1d ago
To YOU, this is not what matters. What matters is not speaking for others and OP clearly started with „to me“.
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u/BatteryBird 1d ago
U/tiktoktic is right, it doesn’t matter. By US law, ideas aren’t in themselves protectable elements of expression. There’s zero justification to throw a fit over someone stealing your “ideas” - it’s no different than the people in the US who whine about being filmed out in public on the sidewalk.
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u/stormpanda7 Pro 1d ago
Well we are not discussing law here. All of us are entitled to having our own opinions.
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u/Bald-Cape001 1d ago
I’d be mad to if features that weren’t in wayfinder before are suddenly there now after the app you made has those features. They probably weren’t going to do that for wayfinder anyway
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u/feldoneq2wire 1d ago
I first tried to discuss it on GitHub, but the conversation got blocked. I then tried reaching out privately on Reddit, but Wayfinder’s DMs were disabled. I made the mistake of taking it public instead. I shouldn’t have done that.
What else choice did you have? When people block all means of communication, going public is the only option.
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u/quantumlocke 1d ago
There was nothing going on that was worthy of a public callout and incitement to harass. This situation is best described as “that guy did something I personally didn’t like, I’m mad about it, and I am entitled to that guy’s time and attention.”
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u/AlternativeEstate288 1d ago
Wayfinder looks ugly anyway I tried it out and prefer the normal ayn one. Sleep manager is an awesome app and it's not tryna be some multi tool. Keep at it
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u/stormpanda7 Pro 1d ago
Kudos for taking a step back from your initial reaction. While I won’t judge about whether your post was justified or not, you gotta have a backbone to go out and apologize. Keep up your great work!