Developer Apologizes for AI-Generated Astronomy App That Plagiarized Open Source Project
Terry Godier admits his Claude-built Dark Hours website closely mimicked an existing open source project, even reproducing its bugs, and redirects users to the original.
Conversation activity · last 25 hours peak 6/hr
Summary, timeline and people extracted by Claude from 17 items across 4 sources · 19h ago. Quotes are verbatim.
Developer Terry Godier launched a web app called Dark Hours last week using Claude AI to help visualize night sky objects. When another developer pointed out the striking similarity to their existing open source project DarkHours.app—including the name and even a specific bug—Godier published a public apology, acknowledged his careless reliance on AI without vetting for existing work, and redirected his domain to the original project. The incident has sparked discussion in tech communities about the risks of using LLMs to generate code without due diligence on originality.
- Claude AI generated code that reproduced an existing open source astronomy app down to the name and even a specific bug, raising serious questions about LLM training data and plagiarism.
- Godier's apology has itself become controversial, with commenters skeptical of his claim he had no prior knowledge and questioning whether the apology adequately addresses all the issues involved.
- The incident highlights the broader risk to open source projects and software companies when LLM-generated code enters their workflows without proper due diligence on originality.
- Godier pledged to discontinue using AI for web development going forward and redirected his domain to credit the original DarkHours.app project.
How it unfolded
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Reaction Commenters question completeness of apology
HN commenters argue the apology may be incomplete, with one noting no mention or apology for allegedly misleading journalist John Gruber, and another calling it a 'limited hangout' damage-control strategy.
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Analysis Security researcher highlights broader concerns
David Chisnall on Mastodon notes this should concern open source projects and companies, arguing the similarity level suggests derived work and raises questions about LLM training data.
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Report Mea Culpa blog post published
Godier publishes a detailed blog post apologizing for his irresponsible use of AI and taking full responsibility despite never having seen the original project before.
“I'd also like to apologize for my irresponsible use of AI to build such a thing. While I had genuinely never seen DarkHours.app before yesterday, I was careless in relying on AI to generate the project without doing the work to understand…”
Terry Godier · Hacker News ↗ -
Reaction Story gains traction on Hacker News
The blog post reaches Hacker News frontpage with 383 points and attracts 169 comments within hours, sparking debate about AI-generated code and plagiarism.
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Event Godier redirects domain, plans retraction
After recognizing the striking similarity—including reproduction of a specific bug the original developer had later fixed—Godier decided to redirect his domain directly to DarkHours.app and kill plans for an iOS app.
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Event Similarity discovered on Bluesky
A developer who created DarkHours.app replied to Godier's comment on Bluesky to point out the similarity between the two projects, including the identical name.
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Event Dark Hours website launched
Terry Godier launched a web app called Dark Hours, a website utility designed to show what could be seen in the sky that night, built using Claude AI.
What people are saying verbatim
“I'd also like to apologize for my irresponsible use of AI to build such a thing. While I had genuinely never seen DarkHours.app before yesterday, I was careless in relying on AI to generate the project without doing the work to understand whether it closely resembled an existing project.”
Terry Godier, Developer · Blog post ↗ · Aug 8
“web app I had launched using Claude was strikingly similar to his open source project, even reproducing a bug he had later fixed”
Terry Godier, Developer · Blog post ↗ · Aug 8
“This story should terrify any open source project or company that allows LLM-generated code into their project. Someone created a new app, using Gemini. Only it wasn't a new app, it was clearly plagiarised because it happened that there was an example in the training set that exactly matched the requirements.”
david_chisnall@infosec.exchange, Security researcher · Mastodon ↗ · Aug 8
“It's not much of a mea culpa when there's not even a mention, let alone an apology, for misleading John Gruber.”
cube00, HN commenter · Hacker News ↗ · Aug 8
“How do I prompt to get a literal copy of another app? When Claude/Gemini builds anything for me I have a thousand ideas for functionality improvements and UI/UX changes. How do you just stop at v1 of what Claude gives you?”
parasti, HN commenter · Hacker News ↗ · Aug 8
“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.”
chuckadams, HN commenter · Hacker News ↗ · Aug 8
“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.”
mark_l_watson, HN commenter · Hacker News ↗ · Aug 8
Voices from the web unedited
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This story should terrify any open source project or company that allows LLM-generated code into their project. Someone created a new app, using Gemini. Only it wasn’t a new app, it was clearly plagiarised because it happened that there was an example in the training set that exactly matched the requirements. The similarity was well within the…
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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…
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"Dark Hours" is probably one of the first public smoking gun cases of a complete app (including the name) being copy/pasted by Claude Code and getting the "AI-enhanced" developer into trouble. Godier did a good job in the aftermath by taking the app down and apologizing, but people really need to understand that "AI code" comes from somewhere and…
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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…
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> While I had genuinely never seen DarkHours.app before yesterday, I was careless in relying on AI to generate the project without doing the work to understand whether it closely resembled an existing project. That’s on me, and I am responsible for what I published.Super-convincingly phrased, but after skimming how this unfolded without knowing…
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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…
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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:
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> web app I had launched using Claude was strikingly similar to his open source project, even reproducing a bug he had later fixed,How? How do I prompt to get a literal copy of another app? When Claude/Gemini builds anything for me I have a thousand ideas for functionality improvements and UI/UX changes. How do you just stop at v1 of what Claude…
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> Going forward, I won’t be using AI in this way to create any more web stuff, and I do not use it to anything close to this extent on iOS software.'comon now, let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.That's a bit of an scorched earth extreme response imho.
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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.)