Install.md: A standard for LLM-executable installation

Mintlify just pitched a bold new idea: a simple “install.md” file that chatbots can read and execute to set up your software—no guesswork, all steps spelled out. It’s live on big docs like LangChain and Cerebras, and the demo vibe is “just pipe installmd.org into your favorite AI and boom, done.” The company claims it’s safer than those sketchy copy‑paste commands because it’s human‑readable and can ask for approval. But the internet heard one thing: “let bots run your install,” and absolutely lost it.

Hacker News lit up with roast-level skepticism. The top vibe: this is “curl | bash” all over again—only now with vibes and vibes can hallucinate. One commenter compared it to letting the military build your spice rack, another begged to “get off this train,” and several wondered how this even hit the front page. Critics called it satire, flagged security nightmares, and dunked on the example “curl … | claude” as a meme-in-the-making. A few squinted at the promise—human-readable steps, optional approvals—but the thread was a near-unanimous clapback: nobody wants to hand an AI root access to their machine because a markdown file said so. Verdict from the crowd: spicy idea, but the trust deficit is astronomical.