cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/50693956
Transcript
A post by [object Object] (@zzt@mas.to) saying: courtesy of @davidgerard@circumstances.run, Proton is now the only privacy vendor I know of that vibe codes its apps: In the single most damning thing I can say about Proton in 2025, the Proton GitHub repository has a “cursorrules” file. They’re vibe-coding their public systems. Much secure! I am once again begging anyone who will listen to get off of Proton as soon as reasonably possible, and to avoid their new (terrible) apps in any case. https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/114961415946154957It has a reply by the author saying: in an unsurprising update for those familiar with how Proton operates, they silently rewrote their monorepo’s history to purge .cursor and hide that they were vibe coding: https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients/tree/2a5e2ad4db0c84f39050bf2353c944a96d38e07f
given the utter lack of communication from Proton on this, I can only guess they’ve extracted .cursor into an external repository and continue to use it out of sight of the public
What is ". cursor"?
Cursor is a version of a popular coding program that integrates Ai into the editor. A
.cursoris a text file that you put into your code folder that gives extra context and information to the Cursor code editor.Does anything here imply that the entire application was "vibe coded"? Or is it possible that a developer just used AI a few times to help with a line or two?
No. There’s no indication that any AI code was or was not added to their repository, nor is there any indication that any “vibe coding” was done. It could be that some junior developer installed Cursor on their machine and was playing with it and committed the
.cursorfile which was subsequently removed. More likely, they’re experimenting with introducing some AI into their development workflow as almost every company seems to be doing these days. Not great, but not nearly as alarming or damning as this post suggests.How did it get past code review?
No, it's entirely possible they used cursor without any AI at all (that's unlikely, AI is kind of cursor's big thing), used it in a few places, as a slightly better autocomplete, or to "vibe code the whole thing". There are probably good reasons to avoid proton, but a text file in their repo related to a specific text editor isn't very significant.
Cursor is an AI code editor. Like most code editors it leaves a hidden settings file in the project. This file can then deliberately (or accidentally) be commited to the repo.