r/opensource banned AI projects. Show HN shows the real problem

Short answer: r/opensource just banned projects built with LLMs and solo projects, and the internet is cheering it as a stand against slop. Our pull of every Show HN post since 2022, all 111,039 of them, says the flood is real: monthly posts went from 879 to a peak of 6,217, and the odds of a launch reaching 100 points fell from 1 in 16 to 1 in 61. But the same data says a tool ban is the wrong fix. The voters were already sorting AI launches out on merit, and a quarter of this year's hits would have been deleted by the rule.

TL;DR: Show HN, the Hacker News section where builders post what they made, got 40,973 launches in 2026 through October 25, four times 2022's 10,091, while the number that reached 100 points barely moved (615 then, 667 now). AI-titled launches made up 37.1% of 2026 posts and hit 100 points 1.08% of the time, against 1.95% for everything else, so the crowd already discounts them without a ban. When Hacker News limited new accounts instead of banning a tool, weekly Show HN volume fell 69% in ten weeks and the AI launches that won (165 of them this year) stayed. The move for builders: stop worrying about which tool you used and start worrying about the 62% of launches that get zero comments.

Key numbers

What	Number	Source, checked Oct 25 2026
Show HN posts, Jan 2022 to Oct 25 2026	111,039	HN Algolia API, our pull
Show HN posts per month, Jan 2022 vs Feb 2026 peak	879 to 6,217 (7.1x)	HN Algolia API, our pull
Odds a Show HN reaches 100+ points, 2022 vs 2026	6.09% (1 in 16) to 1.63% (1 in 61)	HN Algolia API, our pull
Show HN posts with 100+ points, 2022 vs 2026 to date	615 vs 667	HN Algolia API, our pull
Share of 2026 Show HNs with AI in the title	37.1% (15,219 posts)	HN Algolia API, our pull
2026 odds of 100+ points: AI-titled vs the rest	1.08% vs 1.95%	HN Algolia API, our pull
Weekly Show HN posts, week of Mar 2 vs week of May 11 2026	1,913 to 585 (-69%)	HN Algolia API, our pull
2026 Show HN posts that mention Claude Code	2,650 (0 in 2022)	HN Algolia API, our pull

r/opensource picked a side, and it picked the gatekeepers

The r/opensource moderators announced a rule that bans projects made with LLMs and, in the same stroke, solo projects. The thread title says it plainly: "your tokens aren't valuable, no more AI". It hit the Hacker News front page on October 25 with 76 points and 103 comments.

The top reply on Hacker News nailed the problem in one line: banning AI is one thing, but "demanding multiple contributors? All of D.J. Bernstein's software would be banned." Another commenter, TuxSH, summed up the rule as banning "solo projects, and any kind of AI usage even if not slop."

So here is the fight, and we're picking a side. Open source was built by one person in a bedroom with a compiler. Banning solo builders because AI made solo building easy is gatekeeping wearing an anti-slop costume, and it's lowkey the least open thing an open source forum could do.

The flood is real: 7x the launches, the same number of hits

We're not going to pretend the moderators are imagining things. Reddit wouldn't let our scripts in today, but Hacker News keeps a perfect public record through its Algolia search API. So we pulled every Show HN post from January 1 2022 to October 25 2026: 111,039 launches, with points, comments and post text.

In January 2022, Show HN got 879 posts. It crossed 2,000 a month in March 2025, hit 4,758 in January 2026 and peaked at 6,217 in February 2026. That is 7.1 times the 2022 level.

The number of launches that people actually cared about did not follow. Show HN produced 615 posts with 100 or more points in 2022, 840 in 2024 and 667 so far in 2026. The audience has a fixed amount of attention, and the supply of launches just went vertical.

Distinct posters tell the same story. 6,653 different accounts posted a Show HN in 2022. In 2026 so far, 27,558 did, 4.1 times as many.

Your launch's odds of a hit fell from 1 in 16 to 1 in 61

Put those two lines together and you get the number every builder should tape to their monitor. In 2022, 6.09% of Show HN posts reached 100 points, about 1 in 16. In 2025 it was 2.62%. In 2026 it's 1.63%, about 1 in 61. That's a 73% drop in four years.

The silence is worse than the odds. In 2022, 47.8% of Show HN posts got zero comments. In 2026 it's 62.4%. A third of this year's launches (33.1%) sit at one point or less, which means nobody but the poster clicked the arrow.

Credit where it's due: Arthur Cnops spotted this early in "Is Show HN Dead? No, But It's Drowning" on February 17, with Show HN volume near 4.8k a month and an estimated 2.9 hours on the first page at peak. Our pull runs eight more months and splits the launches by AI, which is where the story flips.

The crowd already punishes AI launches. No ban needed

We tagged every launch whose title names AI, an LLM, GPT, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Cursor, Copilot, agents, MCP, vibe coding or a model family. In 2022, 5.5% of Show HNs were AI-titled. In 2023 it jumped to 26.9%. In 2026 it's 37.1%, peaking at 43.0% in March.

Here's the receipt the ban crowd skipped. In 2026, AI-titled launches reached 100 points 1.08% of the time, about 1 in 92. Everything else hit 1.95%, about 1 in 51. Voters are already discounting AI launches by almost half, on their own, with no rule.

And the AI launches that do win are some of the best posts on the site. The top AI-titled Show HN of 2026 is "I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work" at 915 points, followed by Needle, a 26M model distilled from Gemini's tool calling (776), and Apfel, "the free AI already on your Mac" (743). Those 165 AI-titled hits are 24.7% of every 100-point Show HN this year. A tool ban deletes a quarter of the winners to get rid of the losers that voting already buried.

The solo builders r/opensource just banned? Show HN titles that start with "I built", "I made" or "I wrote" hit 100 points 2.06% of the time in 2026, beating the 1.63% average by about a quarter. On the one forum with a public scoreboard, the bedroom builder is still the one people want to read.

Hacker News fixed it without banning a single tool

Hacker News had the same flood and chose a different weapon. On March 8, a post titled "Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting" drew 721 points, complaining about "clearly AI generated posts" from brand new accounts, "more noticeable in the Show HN section." Three days later, a link to the new guideline against generated and AI-edited comments pulled 4,229 points.

The fix HN shipped for launches was about newcomers, not tools. Its Show HN notice reads: "We're temporarily restricting Show HNs because of a massive influx, mostly by users who aren't yet familiar with the site or its culture." Get to know the community first, then post.

The weekly numbers show it worked. Show HN got 1,913 posts the week of March 2, the week that Ask HN thread landed. The next week fell to 1,200, then 819 by late March and 585 by the week of May 11, down 69%. It has since settled around 950 a week. We can't see the exact day the switch flipped, but the drop starts right after that thread, and moderator dang was linking the notice by April 22.

Notice what HN did not do. It didn't ask what editor you used. Moderator dang even floated asking AI-built Show HNs to share their prompts, because "the prompts are the real source." That's a rule written by someone who wants to see AI-built work, not hide it.

Follow the incentives: who wins from a tool ban

The winners of r/opensource's rule are easy to name. Established projects with big contributor lists, which now face fewer new rivals for the front page. Moderators, who swap a hard judgment call (is this good?) for an easy one (did a model touch it?). And the "real programmers" crowd, who get to feel the craft is safe for one more year.

The losers are the people open source is supposed to be for. The solo developer with a weekend and a model subscription. The non-native English speaker who used a model to write a README. The 2,650 Show HN posts this year that name Claude Code out loud, which under a rule like r/opensource's are unwelcome by confession whenever the tool helped build them. Honest builders get banned; the ones who strip the "Co-Authored-By" line sail through.

That last part is the tell. A tool ban can't be enforced, only confessed to. So it punishes disclosure and rewards hiding, which is exactly backwards for a community whose whole value is reading the source.

Our bet: the ban backfires within a year

Here's where we think this goes. Nobody has proven it yet, but the pattern says AI-assisted code is heading for the default, not the exception: AI-titled launches went from 5.5% to 37.1% of Show HN in four years, and Claude Code mentions went from zero to 2,650. A forum that bans that is banning most new projects by 2027.

Our read: r/opensource either quietly rewrites the rule into something like HN's (newcomer limits, quality bars, show your prompts) or watches the best AI-built open source move to places that will have it. Gatekeepers always think they're protecting the craft. Usually they're just protecting the queue. The ban is giving "get off my lawn," and the lawn is about to be most of the internet.

What this means for you

If you're launching: the tool doesn't sink you, the pitch does. Lead with what the thing does in one line, show it working, say plainly how you built it, and answer every comment in the first two hours. With 62% of launches getting zero comments, a launch with a real conversation is already in the top third.

If you moderate a community: copy Hacker News, not r/opensource. Rate-limit new accounts, judge the work, and ask for the prompts. Ban behaviour, not tools.

If you just read: upvote the good stuff you find in the Show HN new queue, because 1 in 61 is brutal and the gems really are getting buried. More on the AI fights shaping dev work in our LLM hub, the coding agents archive and Tensorust Opinion. We also tested what actually moves a launch in our landing page grader run on 2,077 Show HN pages.

Shipping a vibe-coded project and about to post it? Run the $49 Launch Check first. We read your live URL the way an attacker does: exposed keys, open tables, missing headers, worst first, with the exact fix in 48 hours. If a problem we checked turns up later, we keep fixing it at no extra cost.

The full dataset (every month since January 2022 with posts, hits, AI share and points, plus yearly odds and 2026 weekly counts) is in the download below. A note on method: points are as of October 25 2026, so the last two days of posts are still scoring, and the AI tag reads titles only, so it undercounts AI-built launches.

Sources

• HN Algolia Search API, tags=show_hn, every post Jan 1 2022 to Oct 25 2026 (111,039), pulled Oct 25 2026
• r/opensource, "your tokens aren't valuable, no more AI" rule post, Oct 2026
• Hacker News, "R/open source bans all solo projects and projects using LLMs", 76 points, 103 comments, Oct 25 2026
• Arthur Cnops, "Is Show HN Dead? No, But It's Drowning", Feb 17 2026
• Oras, "Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting", 721 points, Mar 8 2026
• Hacker News guidelines, generated and AI-edited comments (HN post 4,229 points), Mar 11 2026
• Hacker News, "Update re Show HNs", checked Oct 25 2026
• dang on HN, sharing prompts for generated Show HNs, Feb 21 2026
• dang on HN, linking the Show HN limit, Apr 22 2026