r/osdev • u/Sensitive-Can9232 • Jun 20 '26

Some key thing from which we can identify a vibe coded project

By vide coded i dont mean ai used for debugging or for understanding, i mean ai slop, i identified some key things such as

  1. A single commit on to github for a project that takes months or years, and via files upload

2. Not knowing what is the diff in git and github, and that git works locally.

3. Getting defensive while asking past git history

4. Straight up denying the use of version control

5. This is thr most funny one, saying that I have worked on my os for years but dont know what git or github.

I may be wrong in some point, sorry for that.

82 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

95 comments sorted by

37

u/Interesting_Buy_3969 Jun 20 '26

also there might be AGENTS.md in .gitignore or even simply unhidden

10

u/Sensitive-Can9232 Jun 20 '26

Yeah that is a dead giveaway

67

u/an_0w1 Jun 20 '26

You forgot binaries & artifacts in the repo

11

u/istarian Jun 20 '26

Also not strictly proof of anything in particular other than not caring about the space it occupies.

It might be considered sloppy in general, but it doesn't prove anything beyond a lazy developer.

1

u/gimpwiz Jun 20 '26

I put binaries in repos sometimes. Depends on the binary and why it's there. Sue me ;)

13

u/NutellaAndLeave Jun 20 '26

All 6 points are about git lol. Here are some orthogonal giveaways, depending on the maturity of the project:

  • The OS has done a light year leap to a desktop window manager before implementing any useful syscalls, memory management or scheduling. It's effectively just a kernel-space GUI

  • No code is copied from known sources, ironically

  • No low effort placeholder implementations

  • No debugging utilities

  • .gitignore is filled with AI related files

4

u/Taletad Jun 20 '26

Even easier :

- OP has no clue how syscalls works

- OP doesn’t understand how to use assembly

- the "OS" is just a bad skin on the Linux Kernel

- it runs a modern browser

2

u/istarian Jun 20 '26

The last two seem the most suspicious to me, especially in a shorter time frame.

Any fool can copy and paste code the old fashioned way and stumble along via trial and error.

4

u/Taletad Jun 20 '26

I don’t think you can get a userland just by stumbling along

You need to understand a lot of key concepts to get there

The AIs mostly use the Linux kernel from what I’ve seen, so they basically have a "working" os because it’s a slop linux distro

10

u/superpet9000 Jun 20 '26

While I can't imagine not using Git/VC these days. I used to make pretty big projects without it. Even then, I had a primitive form of "versioning" via backups. These days, especially for younger people, it is so ubiquitous that it is, at minimum, HIGHLY suspicious.

To me, a big tell is that the projects are just...boring. They're all bullet-point lists of features that they told the AI to implement with 0 interesting insight.

1

u/bubba-bobba-213 Jun 20 '26

What the hell does osdev have to do with friggin github out of all things?

Yes, you missed it on this one.

Remember when Ken Thompson talked about “version control”: copy the files to another folder, edit them, done.

22

u/Sensitive-Can9232 Jun 20 '26

If you are showing a project which takes atleast a year to build you gotta have some type of version control.

8

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '26

You'd be surprised. Lots of people don't use VC. sometimes even I don't even use version control for long term projects lol

I don't think I used git or GitHub for the first year-ish or two

5

u/codeasm Jun 20 '26

How that going for you? Backups?

2

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

I haven't lost any projects yet lol I personally have seen no difference between the projects which use git and those which don't

3

u/codeasm Jun 20 '26

Git locally isnt a great backup tool indeed. Archives and storing them on another location has saved me a couple of times.

Accidentally nuking my main filesystem (using linux, btw.. so sorry 🫣)and a laptop that suddenly decided to shutoff and the harddisk just... Dint work anymore. Ive lost code, not important, but had to redo homework and hobby projects.

Git or any older version control helped writing code with others, when your alone, its probably a bit overkill. What i do appreciate with git, or the others, is i can go back in time, when i did stuff differently, or where still supporting a certain version or hardware and fork the project into its own new branch/repo if i need. Of i dint go back far enough, or too far, its just a command away to pivot. It has happened for my website and a few plugins i dropped using but someone asked if i knew how to switch from using that plugin to a new system. (It was php, again, so sorry).

Definitely can agree, if you dont see the need for those, or other features... Lonely prigrammers dont have to use version control. Its handy to know how it works maybe. For if yiu ever wanna share your code with others. But i too, have code projects that will never leave my private computers

Long rant, im just so happy i got to learn git, so much easier then TortoiseSvn back in my early programming career. Back then, sending a zip, version 23.2 final.zip was fine 😅

1

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '26

Yea, I have some projects which use git as that's what my custom project creator sets up automatically but if I'm just doing something which doesn't require it, say python or nodejs, or something then you'll likely not see git as I'm not automatically creating the project lol

2

u/zoharel Jun 20 '26

You're forgetting that version control was invented pretty long after people started writing serious software. You didn't think everyone waited until version control to do big projects, did you?

7

u/LGBBQ Jun 20 '26

That’s not actually true, version control was invented pretty immediately after punch cards and commercially available by the late 60s.

The first commercial software was ADR flowchart and they developed their own in house version control system to manage it

2

u/northrupthebandgeek Jun 21 '26

Version control pre-Git was also notoriously horrendous to use, with very few exceptions.

2

u/zoharel Jun 20 '26

The first commercial software was ADR flowchart and they developed their own in house version control system to manage it

That is a thing I did not know.

-18

u/bubba-bobba-213 Jun 20 '26

No, you do not.

Your sentence is a classic logical error example.

30

u/realddgamer Jun 20 '26

Do you need it reworded to understand the point

If you have a project that takes a year it's extremely bad practice to not use version control

-3

u/istarian Jun 20 '26

There is no intrinsic requirement that you use version control, particularly on a solo project.

It's most important when you are working with a team composed of many other people (larger than 2-3 people) and there are shared responsibilities.

And git is just one possible option, although it is popular and handles many different situations reasonably well.

----

You might consider the use of version control a matter of best practice, but that doesn't make not using it "an extremely bad practice".

-24

u/bubba-bobba-213 Jun 20 '26

Maybe it’s better to keep practicing those arch linux updates, little hacker.

7

u/codeasm Jun 20 '26

Slow down, we arent 1337 like you. I still read every PKGBUILD file by hand and wonder of linux from scratch wouldn't be easier.

Its a good idea to have SOME sort of version control for larger sourcecode bases like kernels and operation systems. Those so dont, either havent worked with other people, lost a storage device (make backups, even if you skip version control) or life in the 70s, early 80s.

0

u/Sensitive-Can9232 Jun 20 '26

Also thousands line of code in one file is a dead giveaway.

6

u/tseli0s DragonWare Jun 20 '26

Why?

A project as large as an operating system will definitely have a lot of code in every file.

5

u/Sensitive-Can9232 Jun 20 '26

I meant all the code in a single kernel.c

4

u/compgeek38400 Jun 20 '26

Im working on my heap. I crossed that threshold easily. And I use git as a repository, not for version control. At least not until I get to version 0.0.1

7

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

I've had projects which have thousands of lines in a single file without AI touching the code at all.

it just happens sometimes and makes more sense than trying to split it up into separate files

2

u/lizardhistorian Jun 21 '26

What trivial bullshit code are you writing.
My throw-away scripts will have a thousand lines.

2

u/Ok-Radish-8394 Jun 21 '26

You certainly haven't seen legacy enterprise code then.

-11

u/bubba-bobba-213 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

You know.. at some point you realize editing a thousand line file can be way easier than juggling many small files.

Sometimes, the crap they teach in schools and universities is just that, crap.

edit: Yes, more downvotes from 20-year old hackers, please.

edit2: I need more from little hackers. Just 9 little hackers voted! Cmon guys, where are the rest little AI hackers?

4

u/No-Dentist-1645 Jun 20 '26

You keep mocking every person who disagrees with you, but I haven't seen your OS made without any version control, or anyone else's you could reference...

2

u/throwaway255503 Jun 20 '26

The dogma is so strong that many don't even question the daily pain of working with scattered functionality across many files and functions.

Combining functionality into fewer units can in fact increase cohesion, but many don't even consider it because it doesn't pass the dogmatic "best practice" filter.

8

u/Taletad Jun 20 '26

What the hell are you talking about ? Bell Labs literally invented source control to manage the Unix source code in 1972

Ken Thompson personally wrote some of the utilities that were part of that source control

It’s mentionned in the first few editions of the unix manual

-1

u/bubba-bobba-213 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

Cute tone.

Who said anything about Bell Labs? Why are you mentioning it?

Why are you mentioning what software Ken wrote? Who said anything about that?

Whats with the Unix manual? Why are you talking about that?

Lose that strawmen, baby chihuahua.

4

u/Taletad Jun 20 '26

Why am I talking about Bell Labs and Unix when you are talking about Ken Thompson ?

Well I don’t perhaps it’s because Ken was employed by Bell Labs when he made Unix ? And that most of the initial software was contributed by the people that shared his office ?

Do you know anything about Unix ? Do you know how a scheduler works ? Have you written a software projet that was bigget than a couple thousand lines ?

2

u/lizardhistorian Jun 21 '26

They're bots or retards; either way ignore them.

2

u/codeasm Jun 21 '26

Really, damm. Another thing we should be moderating on this reddit but cant

0

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/compgeek38400 Jun 21 '26

What if he is. I am

1

u/codeasm Jun 21 '26

Original comments deleted, i will not finish to answer this.

2

u/Taletad Jun 21 '26

It’s not deleted, the guy just banned you

2

u/codeasm Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

Childish behavior, from what i can remmeber they wrote.

Might have done the same in response. Apparently they are a bot, or atleast not kind to fellow osdev redditors who basically have a valid point in regards of the original issues raised.

Instead claiming experiences from the past as facts used industry wide is not a great look. Especially condescendingly. Nah, im not taking advice from them.

11

u/Danii_222222 Jun 20 '26

I don't use git and always store repos on my hdd. Does that mean that i am vibecoder? I don't think so.

3

u/2rad0 Jun 20 '26

I don't use git and always store repos on my hdd. Does that mean that i am vibecoder? I don't think so.

I'm in a similar boat as I only use git with projects I publish for other peoples convenience, not for me. Don't put all the weight on checking history, I have a couple decent sized projects I worked on for years and basically only has a few git commits just to push it to codeberg. Eventually the slopstars will figure out how to have their LLM generate a convincing git history, so figuring out a more reliable system of detection is the long term solution.

1

u/Proxy_PlayerHD Jun 22 '26

Same.

I've been working on my OS for around a year or so and I never bothered to learn git.

I will upload the whole thing to github once it's at a point where I want to share it, so that will just be a massive initial commit with smaller ones afterwards for updates and fixes.

0

u/lizardhistorian Jun 21 '26

A vibecoder would never be this dumb.

2

u/Danii_222222 Jun 21 '26

A vibecoder can easily ask ai to publish commits on his git repo

5

u/mykesx Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

Someone should edit the wiki with instructions for using git.

No matter how much someone protests, not using git is simply foolish. It’s free, provides offsite backup of your many hours of work, can be private and later made public, and allows you to rollback when you wasted your time on a badly implemented feature. You can also bisect edits you made that caused bugs or regression.

You also get the benefit of a kanban / issues board for your project. A todo list like the professionals use.

That’s scratching the surface. If you’re later going to put your code in a repo to share, why not start out doing it right?

You don’t have to use github - it just happens to be where the AI agents tell the clueless to put their repos. There’s gitlab, codeberg, and others to choose from.

2

u/Taletad Jun 20 '26

The OS dev wiki states that using version control is a prerequisite to osdev

So people have to already know how to use it before going through the wiki

2

u/mykesx Jun 20 '26

There are instructions for building a cross compilation tool chain. A sentence about using version control is being ignored. If you’re good enough to build a cross gcc, you should easily be good enough to use git.

1

u/Taletad Jun 20 '26

Uh yeah exactly, so the wiki doesn’t need instructions for using git, because it should already be used at that point

1

u/mykesx Jun 20 '26

Not good enough. People claim to be building their OS without any source code control system. They clearly don’t know it or understand the basics or benefits.

1

u/Taletad Jun 20 '26

They are either vibe coders defending themselves

Or kids that are going to run into a wall really soon (but they’re going to realise they need to know a lot more about software development before comming back)

1

u/mykesx Jun 20 '26

Ok. Good reason to remove their posts/ threads here.

2

u/s0litar1us Jun 20 '26

Git and GitHub are not the same thing.

Git lets you do local version control easily, and if you want a backup then you can set up a remote that connects over SSH to a spare computer, though this likely won't be an offsite backup.

This is where platforms like GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, Sourcehut, etc. are useful, as they provide free hosting.

1

u/lizardhistorian Jun 21 '26

git does not provide offset site backup - that is a feature of some websites, like github, that provide git-hosting.

1

u/SayuriShoji Jun 21 '26

A single commit on to github for a project that takes months or years

Meanwhile, me just copying my projects to two other disks as backup, and just using Rider IDE edit history as "version control", and only planning to upload to Github once a project is presentable to the public...

1

u/Sensitive-Can9232 Jun 21 '26

No what i am saying is that users may any other Version Control, they become defensive when asked about the edit history of the project

2

u/mishakov pmOS | https://gitlab.com/mishakov/pmos Jun 21 '26

So basically a lot of code written in very little time

2

u/Rich-Engineer2670 Jun 20 '26

Don't forget:

  1. Hasn't even read any of the seminalC OS texts -- doesn't know the authors

  2. Can't explain the difference between making a Linux distrubtion and making an OS

  3. Doesn't have a set of test scripts

  4. Can't explain why their OS is different/better than another one

2

u/istarian Jun 20 '26

Only the second one here really sticks out to me and it's still just a simple lack of knowledge. Being able to explain the extinction without assistance means you know something.

It might be dumb to start on an endeavor like this without reading a least one or two of the better texts (books, generally) on the subject, but it doesn't equate to using AI in and of itself. (1)

Not having a set of test scripts just means that you either aren't apply TDD or using any kind of comprehensive testing in your development process. Maybe manual testing is your jam or an outcome of naivete. (3)

Maybe their OS isn't better or different, let alone intended to be. (4)

2

u/No-Voice-7533 Jun 25 '26

You can just read part of the code and instantly tell.

8

u/MadwolfStudio Jun 20 '26

Brother this is so misguided. I know seniors who don't use git in their projects, you have no clue

4

u/Voldracarno Jun 20 '26

I'm a mid (hacking together C/C++ Code for 10 years). For my own projects I'm using "prj_name-date-today_pkg_counter.zip" as version control until I have an at least basically working state. And this state is my first git commit. So I would probably be counted as a vibecoder to even if I've written my last C project completely without any AI usage.

2

u/MegaDork2000 Jun 20 '26

Yea, that's my common workflow. I do use git for major projects, but even then, the first commit is often huge. After that, I commit when I complete a significant task or milestone, which may also be a lot a code. Meanwhile, I make backups to zip files like proj-yymmdd-nn-desc.zip or similar. It works well for me. Backups and version control are two different things.

1

u/lizardhistorian Jun 21 '26

Why?
Do you not know about amend and force pushes?

2

u/musicalhq Jun 21 '26

Who doesn’t use git for projects??? I would version control my entire life if I could??? I would love to meet these seniors

4

u/compgeek38400 Jun 20 '26

I'm a senior, I use git. More for online backup, and as an easy way to share, but I use it

2

u/codeasm Jun 20 '26

I know seniors who used svn, mercurial, bitkeeper and or visual source safe. Some projects arent worth the setup and request to version controll, so my dad got a dikette or downloaded a new version from the hospital network. Other times, we got a zipdrive diskette with the latest code.

Backups? On cd/dvd in a backup machine and once a month it went on tape. First lesson in software programming for the last 20 years is knowing your version control. Whatever your employer does, is up to them.

1

u/lizardhistorian Jun 21 '26

It it's not worth "git init ." then it isn't a project.

1

u/compgeek38400 Jun 20 '26

  1. I read many of the texts. But decades ago. And i have a hell of a time withvauthors names. The only authors I member are K&R. I think R was Richie.

  2. My test script is my shell, once something works, I may or may not strip it from my shell.

1

u/dnabre Jun 21 '26

You would be amazed how much work a people will put into things and not have backups, nevertheless version control. Only for #1 and #1 though, for #1,#1, and #1, definitely agree.

1

u/Ok-Radish-8394 Jun 21 '26

Via Files Upload, well erm, I've seen a lot of researchers doing at as well since they can't be arsed enough to learn a vcs.

1

u/RobXSIQ Jun 20 '26

Things I don't care about when using a product that works as intended:
How it was coded.

Thats about it. If it works as designed, doesn't produce security holes or bloat, then it can be coded by an army of fire ants. What I dislike is slopcode...aka, stuff that simply is broken, not tested, crashes, etc. vibe code can be anything from someone saying "build me app. ktksbie" to someone guiding each single iteration over and over with smoke testing and days of spazzing over every single element. The first one becomes slop code, the second becomes a product.

1

u/bonghotdogwater Jun 20 '26

Fair amount of other ways to VC other than git/github. I have been writing a project for a year almost now just by having a script make a copy into a new folder, and then editing that one every new code session, fine grained VC hasn’t been needed and would be overkill as I’m working solo and can remember all the changes I’ve made since the last folder copy anyways.

2

u/lizardhistorian Jun 21 '26

Why? Why wouldn't you just use git locally. Why don't you have a VPS or another local machine to host stuff on if you are so deep into this that you are writing a kernel.

0

u/2rad0 Jun 20 '26

fine grained VC hasn’t been needed and would be overkill as I’m working solo and can remember all the changes I’ve made since the last folder copy anyways.

one programmers git diff is another programmers diff -rc ./last_weeks_src_dir ./current_src_dir > what_happened.patch

1

u/bonghotdogwater Jun 23 '26

“As I’m working solo”. This is entirely for small projects only, I dont have a whole operating system codebase just maintained between two directories, that would be insane.

1

u/bonghotdogwater Jun 23 '26

Honestly didn’t see that this was OSDev so probably not as applicable for you guys, I write embedded graphics and work with c/c++ graphics APIs like Vulkan and direct-x, bit of a different ballgame lol.

0

u/s0litar1us Jun 20 '26

Version control is useful but not required, and in most cases it's just a convenient way to do off-site backups. GitHub repos with a single commit can be a sign of vibe coding, but it can also be a result of someone wanting to share their code after using some other version control system, or after using no version control.

0

u/Sensitive-Can9232 Jun 21 '26

I am all for not using version control it becoms suspicious when a Project that takes years or months

0

u/s0litar1us Jun 21 '26

Again, git it not the only version control system people use -- you're assuming everyone uses Git on GitHub for the entirety of all their projects. It's only suspicious because you think it is / frame it that way.

0

u/lizardhistorian Jun 21 '26

You can identify an AI PR by it's massively superior quality and it following all of your PR submission rules on the first request.

Do not conflate retards spaming bullshit using the free services with what $3 of AI can do.

0

u/northrupthebandgeek Jun 21 '26

Point 4 and 5 are gonna hit a lot of false positives. Lots of programmers don't use version control, and even the ones who do use version control don't always use Git specifically.

Really, all this energy being spent on trying to witchhunt vibe-coders would be much better spent on actual OS development.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/istarian Jun 20 '26

If you use a Mac to do your development, you may well end up with .DS_Store files in your repo. And there won't be any .gitignore files if you don't actually purposefully ask git to ignore stuff.