February 6, 2026
It’s Slop vs. Mop in open source
Stay Away from My Trash
Open‑source dev slams lid on AI “slop” — commenters want receipts and a slop blocker
TLDR: tldraw’s Steve Ruiz plans to auto‑close outside code submissions after a wave of low‑effort, AI‑assisted pull requests. Commenters split: many cheer the cleanup, others demand transparency (“show the prompt”) or even a “slop blocker,” while a deeper debate rages over whether outside contributions still matter when AI makes coding easy.
Trash talk got literal this week as tldraw’s Steve Ruiz said he’ll start auto‑closing outside pull requests (those “please merge my code” asks) after a flood of low‑effort, AI‑assisted submissions. The twist? He’s fine with AI in coding — he uses it himself — but says context and care matter more than speed. That set off a fiery comment brawl on HN and Twitter/X, where everyone argued over whether the real problem is robots or randoms.
Supporters cheered the lock‑the‑lid move, calling the flood “Eternal Sloptember.” One dev, andai, admitted they were cleaning up drive‑by AI fixes with their own AI (Anthropic’s Claude) and realizing it’d be faster to just write it themselves — sparking the spiciest take of all: if code is now the easy part, is outside code even valuable anymore? Cue the existential crisis for GitHub’s contribution culture.
Then the memes hit. anileated yelled “Just show me the prompt,” roasting those bloated, AI‑padded issues. smusamashah pitched a “SponsorBlock for slop” to publicly tag repeat offenders — a scorcher that had half the crowd cheering and the other half clutching pearls. Meanwhile, wiseowise questioned whether messy AI‑written bug reports actually help or just spawn even messier AI‑written fixes. Ruiz’s point — spelled out here — kept echoing: writing code is almost ceremonial now; the real work is understanding the problem. The community’s split between “close the gate” and “teach the newbies,” but everyone agrees on one thing: the trash fire is real, and it’s getting hotter.
Key Points
- •tldraw plans to automatically close external pull requests due to an influx of low-quality, AI-generated submissions.
- •The author states tldraw accepts AI-assisted code internally; the issue is contribution value without project context.
- •An Excalidraw contribution example highlights that discussion, design, and alignment matter more than implementation.
- •Recent AI-generated PRs appeared correct and passed tests but often amplified flawed issues and ignored templates.
- •Patterns of abandonment and lack of context in AI-generated PRs prompted the move to limit external code contributions.