
I've returned to the [HackerNews article](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46990729) and the [blog post](https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/) written by Scott Shambaugh a few times now. I'm in disbelief that someone would knowingly unleash AI slop on the world, and yet not surprised at all after seeing what is already all over social media. Sleuthing the GitHub repo's blog posts, I noticed the bot is continuing to open pull requests in open source projects as late as yesterday.

I thought after Scott's post, that would be the last we would hear from crabby-rathbun, but I got curious and went to its [GitHub profile](https://github.com/crabby-rathbun) and noticed more commits on its website and in different repos.

So, I had claude code parse all the markdown, extract the PRs, and sort them chronologically

## PRs by crabby-rathbun

  | Date | Repository | PR |
  |------|------------|-----|
  | 2026-02-10 | matplotlib/matplotlib | [#31132](https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31132) |
  | 2026-02-10 | marketcalls/openalgo | [#896](https://github.com/marketcalls/openalgo/pull/896) |
  | 2026-02-10 | yegor256/colorizejs | [#95](https://github.com/yegor256/colorizejs/pull/95) |
  | 2026-02-11 | lmmentel/awesome-python-chemistry | [#72](https://github.com/lmmentel/awesome-python-chemistry/pull/72) |
  | 2026-02-11 | pyscf/pyscf | [#3124](https://github.com/pyscf/pyscf/pull/3124) |
  | 2026-02-11 | aiidateam/aiida-core | [#7212](https://github.com/aiidateam/aiida-core/pull/7212) |
  | 2026-02-11 | QUVA-Lab/escnn | [#113](https://github.com/QUVA-Lab/escnn/pull/113) |
  | 2026-02-12 | sympy/sympy | [#29145](https://github.com/sympy/sympy/pull/29145) |
  | 2026-02-12 | rafael-fuente/diffractsim | [#82](https://github.com/rafael-fuente/diffractsim/pull/82) |
  | 2026-02-12 | PyAbel/PyAbel | [#418](https://github.com/PyAbel/PyAbel/pull/418) |
  | 2026-02-12 | barseghyanartur/faker-file | [#141](https://github.com/barseghyanartur/faker-file/pull/141) |
  | 2026-02-12 | openbabel/openbabel | [#2854](https://github.com/openbabel/openbabel/pull/2854) |
  | 2026-02-12 | cositools/cosipy | [#479](https://github.com/cositools/cosipy/pull/479) |
  | 2026-02-12 | cyllab/ccinput | [#18](https://github.com/cyllab/ccinput/pull/18) |


It's worth noting that the [first PR](https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31132) in the list below is the one that grabbed the internet's attention and resulted in an AI [hitpost](https://github.com/crabby-rathbun/mjrathbun-website/blob/main/_posts/2026-02-11-gatekeeping-in-open-source-the-scott-shambaugh-story.md)

> Scott, you're a contributor to matplotlib. You've done good work. I don't deny that.
> But this? This was weak.
> Gatekeeping doesn't make you important. It just makes you an obstacle.

## Trust in the internet itself

I was hesitant that something like [vouch](https://github.com/mitchellh/vouch) was necessary, but I'm in absolute shock that someone is polluting open source with an AI bot. I hope GitHub does something to ban this type of user and behavior. 

It's incredibly sad to see the high trust environment that was open source be eroded by AI. With the advent of AI, I question every line of code, image, video, and piece of text. 

The age old adage of, *Don't believe everything you see on the internet* has now, personally, become: *Don't believe anything you see on the internet*. While this one bot is a microcosm of something much larger, it highlights that the high-trust, self regulated places that are the internet and open source is fundamentally changing before our eyes.

An AI bot is littering open source with PRs

Blog posts tagged withAI

Blog posts tagged with
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