November 16, 2025
Kirby vs Claude: blob wars
The fate of "small" open source
Dev world splits: AI kills tiny tools, spam rises, jobs at risk? Others say "good"
TLDR: A popular mini library’s creator says tiny open source tools are being replaced by AI that writes code on demand. Commenters split: some warn of spam and lost jobs, others say good riddance—stronger, smarter open source will survive. It matters because it hints at how we’ll learn and build software next.
A beloved tiny tool, blob-util, is getting outpaced by AI bots that can whip up the same code on demand. The author mourns the lost “teacherly” vibe of docs (RIP Kirby mascot), while the comments explode into a showdown over the future of coding. The big claim: small open source libraries are dying because large language models (LLMs—AI assistants) generate the same snippets faster.
Doomers lead with the sirens: RyanHamilton warns of an “era of cheap spam,” predicting mass job loss, while cynicalsecurity goes full apocalypse—why hire a developer when an AI is cheaper and “makes fewer mistakes”? On the flip side, CuriouslyC argues the bar just got higher: small tools survive if they tackle hard problems well. mccoyb counters the gloom with swagger, saying open source will get stronger as creative devs use AI to build things corporate drones never dreamed of. zkmon adds a spicy reality check: if coding becomes trivial, open source’s core mission gets murky.
Memes flew: “Kirby has been replaced by Claude,” “LLM ate my README,” and “llms.txt is just instructions for my robot intern.” The vibe? Half funeral, half pep rally—equal parts panic and “adapt or be replaced.”
Key Points
- •blob-util is a ~10-year-old npm library for JavaScript Blob utilities, still receiving over 5 million weekly downloads.
- •The library was created to address PouchDB users’ confusion around handling and converting Blobs.
- •The author demonstrates that LLMs like Claude can generate small utilities on demand, reducing dependency needs.
- •Modern platform features (e.g., Blob.arrayBuffer(), node:glob, structuredClone) already replace functionality of many small libraries.
- •The author concludes the era of small, low-value libraries is ending, limiting their role as educational tools.