summary
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73% of Flathub apps labeled “AI Slop” were abandoned within a few months.
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Many were removed or did not receive updates after release.
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Our analysis suggests that the AI ban on the Flathub app saved reviewers time and helped curb rapid abandonment ware.
In May 2026, Flathub maintainer Bart Piotrowski announced that the platform would no longer accept apps that use AI-generated code. People speculated that it might do more harm than good, but as one person discovered, apps coded with vibes tend to be abandoned or removed far more often than those created by humans.
73% of AI-generated Flathub apps haven’t been updated in 3 months
Most of them have been completely erased
This research was performed by Linux developer Evangelos Paterakis. They wanted to see how well their AI-generated app was performing months after release. To do this, they searched their repositories for anything tagged with “AI Slop.” Reviewers created this tag to flag apps that clearly use AI in their code, application processes, or both.
Once Paterakis had acquired a collection of AI Slop apps, he set to work investigating how many of them had been abandoned.
To determine whether a repository is “maintained”, we only included PRs created before April 1, 2026, and marked them as unmaintained if they had no activity in the past 2-3 months. However, we ignored minor commits such as README changes and dependent bots.
Paterakis admits this is not a perfect way to find abandoned projects. After all, some apps may simply quit, and some may be dormant for a bit. But apps released just a few months ago have at least some activities on top of that.
So what did they find? Well, of the 120 unique repositories they found with the “AI Slop” label, 32 were still maintained. As a result, 88 of those homes (a whopping 73%) will remain abandoned. The “vast majority” of these abandoned apps had been permanently removed, and others had never received an update since arriving on Flathub.
Paterakis doesn’t want to say that all vibe-coded apps will be retired within a few months, but he can’t help but note that only 27% of them continue to be maintained. Either way, it shows that it was worth banning AI-generated apps and applications just to avoid reviewers fighting with agents over software that becomes abandonware the moment it hits Flathub.
