# Introducing PRNs: High-Performance Reticulum built to run on any Device (And how you can help) _Showcase · started by KenAKAFrosty on Sun, Aug 9, 2026 5:55 PM_ --- ## Original post **KenAKAFrosty** · Sun, Aug 9, 2026 5:55 PM Hey y'all! For a good while now I've been heads-down building a ground-up implementation of Reticulum that can run everywhere, and it's finally at the point where I get to share it. Prns is now public, dual-licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0! The core engine was written in `no_std` Rust (`alloc` isn't even needed) from day one, with the express goal being to have the same engine efficiently run on a $5 microcontroller, in a browser tab over WebAssembly, inside Android and iOS apps natively, and on laptops/backbone servers/etc. Here are some of my favorite bits, in no particular order: - A zero-config Bluetooth auto-interface, with a compat layer so Columba peers connect too - WebSocket interfaces. Not only great for browser integrations on the other end, but since it's ordinary web traffic, a free tunnel (cloudflare tunnel, Tailscale funnel, etc.) gets you a public node from home without the port forwarding or IP exposure. - JavaScript/TypeScript/browser support as a first-class thing. One package that runs native on Node.js/Bun and switches to WebAssembly in the browser. A browser instance can even discover another `prnsd` (the Prns daemon) on your LAN with its implementation of the Wifi auto-interface. - Interface changes will apply live to a running node without a restart. The daemon has an interactive/guided CLI (even while running). Plus a lil system tray; handy to have when running it on your personal computers! - Flashing a board into a complete, self-contained Reticulum node with the Hopspot firmware. There's a web flasher & a guided flasher CLI. A few known boards are live already, and plenty more in the immediate sights. And it's very efficient. The repo ships a benchmark harness that runs Prns and stock RNS side by side on your machine, under identical workloads. On my hardware, most throughput scenarios land between 3× and 20× stock, with peaks of 89× the throughput, 48× smaller peak memory, and 33× the energy efficiency. But the whole point of the harness is that you can get your own numbers, and I'd rather you trust those. Where it all stands today: the foundation is done and verifiable. It was continually built up with a serious focus on safety, performance, energy efficiency, compatibility, and developer/user experience. On top of the expected unit tests, the testing & validation suites include wire parity, live interop, formal proofs (via Kani), fuzzing, and mutation testing, along with matching CI. While documentation is definitely still a work in progress (as is the entire repo), the guides will take you from clone to two meshing nodes today. What's also still taking shape is the outward-facing layer, e.g., SDK ergonomics in each language; packaging; the guides as fresh eyes read them. That's why I'm posting now rather than after another month of quiet polish. Feedback on those pieces steers them while they can still best be steered, and honestly, a few days of you all reading and building will teach me more than that month alone would. (PS: if you've done devrel or docs work, your experience could especially help here.) None of this exists without the years of work behind Reticulum and its reference implementation. What I want most is for this to pull more builders into the ecosystem we already share. I'm excited about a future where we see more apps, more boards, and more nodes meshing. In part just cuz I still think it's freaking *cool*, but also because every one of them strengthens the same network we're all on. If you're willing and able to help out, there's plenty of need! Even the small things help a ton. Here's a list of things already top-of-mind that would be helpful: - Try it and tell me how it went. Friction and breakage reports are gold - Build something small and tell me what the API made easy or awkward - If one of the preview languages is home for you, opinions on its API and packaging are the most helpful thing there is right now (and if your language is missing but can consume a C ABI, give a holler or a PR!) - Board reports beyond what I have on deck (Heltec V4, T-Beam Supreme, T-Echo, XIAO ESP32-C6 live now, plus all the ones you see on the website under 'Bring-up') - Examples we can link to; guides for individual interfaces (they're little programs unto themselves; heck, even just explaining one well is immensely helpful) - Translations! The website has some basic i18n but those translations were AI-written and could use a look from actual native speakers. Eventually, I'd love to have the actual full-on guides available in as many languages as possible too. - Game devs: Godot is where I've been proving things out already, and other engines are wide open and very welcome - Help getting `prnsd` into apt and friends - Tell me what you'd want to build with it. Real use cases can help inform priorities - And if Prns is useful or just interesting at all to you, a GitHub star helps too! On AI Usage: I certainly use AI tooling as a part of my workflow. If you do as well, your contributions are welcome on Prns, but only if you truly digest and respect the first item in the CONTRIBUTING.md guide, under "What we value": > **Ownership.** Contributors own their submissions. > AI tools (and other assistance like pair programming, web snippets, etc.) are welcome, but slop is slop regardless of how it was produced. > How you wield your tools is still under your control, and what you submit is ***yours***. Everything's in the source, including the interop suite and the benchmark harness, available on [GitHub](https://github.com/KenAKAFrosty/Prns). Quick overview + web flasher + small browser demo/playground at [prns.dev](https://prns.dev). I can't wait to see what y'all build! *[Note for the admin] Hey Zenith, I believe this project honors the spirit of your guidelines for projects built with the use of AI tools, even though it doesn't yet meet the age threshold. If you see it differently, just reply here to let me know, and of course feel free to remove the thread. Thanks!* --- ## Reply 1 **bergie** · Sun, Aug 9, 2026 6:20 PM Having more systems with WebSocket interface is great, as that enables browser applications to play a part. After all, web apps are one of the last "permissionless" ways to distribute software for the Major platforms. Have you verified your WebSockets interface works with the Python and reticulum-js (and microReticulum_Firmware) ones? Are you using HLDC or KISS? --- ## Reply 2 **Anonymous** · Sun, Aug 9, 2026 7:01 PM i wouldnt pick that name if i were you --- ## Reply 3 **A. Non** · Sun, Aug 9, 2026 7:08 PM Looking forward to the Heltec T114 build to test out --- ## Reply 4 **Anonymous** · Sun, Aug 9, 2026 8:02 PM Yay! yet another AI Rust implementation. --- ## Reply 5 **Puint** · Sun, Aug 9, 2026 9:57 PM Good to see the repo at last :) ...but wow, it's massive, that is gonna take a while to even crossread. Thanks in any way for sharing the link. --- ## Reply 6 **Puint** · Sun, Aug 9, 2026 10:02 PM **Zenith** wrote: > Why does this not mirror anything from the Python reference implementation at all? There isn't even anything that remotely resembles a `Destination` > > Why is announcing a "command"? and not a method? > > ``` > handle.issue(PrnsCommand::AnnounceNow(AnnounceNow { destination, target, app_data })) > ``` > > Nevermind the fact this is the millionth purely vibecoded LLM Rust port monorepo Sloppulus that is DoA, I have no idea why, even if you were just prompting an AI, would make these decisions. There is no reason to. Why not just mirror what already existed? The Go port and microReticulum do this just fine. Not defending this particular line of Code, but I think there are good reasons to deviate frome the python source, especially with some kind of embedded-first approach. Lots of stuff is simply not doable the way python handles it. That being said, idk how microReticulum solved these particular challenges. C++ is just not easy digestable to me. --- ## Reply 7 **Anonymous** · Sun, Aug 9, 2026 11:23 PM This is just the consequence of no spec and the emergence of LLMs attracts low-effort people to churn out slop implementations and software. The ones that matter are a year old, still maintained and work with the reference implementation not against it. Having 10+ Rust implementations, more than half either vibe coded or heavily AI assisted is honestly embarrassing and fractures the community. Time will tell which implementations actually survive. --- ## Reply 8 **Professor_Boop** · Sun, Aug 9, 2026 11:36 PM Great work, KenAKAFrosty! High performance is great and trying to get it working with apt is really cool and interesting. I appreciate your excitement and initiative regarding the vision of making a high performance Reticulum implementation. I am eager to see its continued development and support. --- ## Reply 9 **Sojourner** · Sun, Aug 9, 2026 11:39 PM **Anonymous** wrote: > This is just the consequence of no spec and the emergence of LLMs attracts low-effort people to churn out slop implementations and software. The ones that matter are a year old, still maintained and work with the reference implementation not against it. > > Having 10+ Rust implementations, more than half either vibe coded or heavily AI assisted is honestly embarrassing and fractures the community. > > Time will tell which implementations actually survive. isn't the point of different implementations that they're wire compatible? otherwise it's a different thing, no? --- ## Reply 10 **bergie** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 2:19 AM **Sojourner** wrote: > isn't the point of different implementations that they're wire compatible? otherwise it's a different thing, no? In theory, yes. But of course given the lack of a formal spec and compatibility test suite, the actual level of wire compatibility will differ, and likely lean towards the particular use cases implementation author had in mind (for example, my JS implementation doesn't support being a transport node at all. It'll come, but is not a priority for JavaScript apps) --- ## Reply 11 **KenAKAFrosty** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 3:52 AM Woo, catching up now! **bergie** wrote: > Having more systems with WebSocket interface is great, as that enables browser applications to play a part. After all, web apps are one of the last "permissionless" ways to distribute software for the Major platforms. > > Have you verified your WebSockets interface works with the Python and reticulum-js (and microReticulum_Firmware) ones? Are you using HLDC or KISS? Didn't reach for HDLC framing, or any framing here, since websockets as an abstraction already gives us framed messages. Instead I just avoided that little bit of framing overhead, since we're given that discrete message abstraction already, and set it up so one Reticulum packet was one binary websocket message. BUT that said, if it's for the sake of compatibility with the ecosystem, I'm all for adding that compat layer! (I was just focused specifically on the reference impl only, which didn't have any websocket interface to interop with in the first place, and I wasn't aware of other established websocket impls yet). All I ask is if you can link me in here to the repo(s) so I can see the contract/protocol, etc. This is a good call-out and I'd love to interop. **Puint** wrote: > **Zenith** wrote: > > Why does this not mirror anything from the Python reference implementation at all? There isn&#039;t even anything that remotely resembles a `Destination` > > > > Why is announcing a &quot;command&quot;? and not a method? > > > > ``` > > handle.issue(PrnsCommand::AnnounceNow(AnnounceNow { destination, target, app_data })) > > ``` > > > > Nevermind the fact this is the millionth purely vibecoded LLM Rust port monorepo Sloppulus that is DoA, I have no idea why, even if you were just prompting an AI, would make these decisions. There is no reason to. Why not just mirror what already existed? The Go port and microReticulum do this just fine. > > Not defending this particular line of Code, but I think there are good reasons to deviate frome the python source, especially with some kind of embedded-first approach. Lots of stuff is simply not doable the way python handles it. > That being said, idk how microReticulum solved these particular challenges. C++ is just not easy digestable to me. Yeah, methods are a lot hairier to deal with when you're targeting different platforms. To Zenith's concerns about the why it was designed that way: There's no doubt its exact API is not going to look 1:1 with the reference implementation. I don't think the point of any of this is just to outright transliterate it, though, right? It's 100% fair if typed message passing & command patterns are just not your cup of tea. I do strongly disagree with "There is no reason to", though. An ordinary method call exists only for the instant it happens, on one stack, in one language. Commands are data. Since they're just data, commands: - can cross a thread, CPU core, or language boundary with little friction and a stable wire/ABI representation - can wait in a queue, where backpressure is also just a value you handle (like `Busy`, or `Full`) - can be easily tested deterministically. The system runs heavily on just putting state + command in, getting outcome (again, just data) out. This is especially useful for property testing and fuzzing - can funnel into a single queue for a single owner. In Prns, the engine owns its state exclusively. That setup sidesteps a large class of locks and contention slowdown. A good chunk of the both the portability and performance story comes from exactly this setup. I promise you this is not a whimsical choice from a drunken afternoon of vibecoding or something lol. But all that may be moot beacuse to be clear, there is indeed a `handle.announce(destination)` convenience method also. (This is a good sign I should probably mention that in the first example though, will add that shortly) For what it's worth, the following examples then go on to show that method-style API too in all the other places where you do want to wait for meaningful returned data, e.g.: `let link_id = requester_handle.establish_link(responder_hash).await`, `let (response, rtt) = requester_handle.request(link_id, RequestEndpointId::of(EXAMPLE_ENDPOINT_ID), message).await` **Professor_Boop** wrote: > Great work, KenAKAFrosty! > > High performance is great and trying to get it working with apt is really cool and interesting. > > I appreciate your excitement and initiative regarding the vision of making a high performance Reticulum implementation. I am eager to see its continued development and support. Thanks, Professor! **A. Non** wrote: > Looking forward to the Heltec T114 build to test out You're already the second person to mention this board. I'll look into getting one to help get this bumped up the list! I have a T096 on my desk waiting to get brought in, but not that one yet. **Puint** wrote: > Good to see the repo at last :) > ...but wow, it's massive, that is gonna take a while to even crossread. Thanks in any way for sharing the link. Yes, sorry for the wait! Thanks for the patience in the meantime haha. If you have questions as you're digging through it, keep note! That could help a lot with improving the documentation --- ## Reply 12 **bergie** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 4:36 AM > BUT that said, if it's for the sake of compatibility with the ecosystem, I'm all for adding that compat layer! (I was just focused specifically on the reference impl only, which didn't have any websocket interface to interop with in the first place, and I wasn't aware of other established websocket impls yet). All I ask is if you can link me in here to the repo(s) so I can see the contract/protocol, etc. This is a good call-out and I'd love to interop. * microReticulum_Firmware supports KISS-framed WebSockets * Reticulum-js supports both HDLc and KISS framing (configurable per interface) * For Python there's https://github.com/nilu96/rnsWebsocketInterface --- ## Reply 13 **KenAKAFrosty** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 4:41 AM **bergie** wrote: > > BUT that said, if it's for the sake of compatibility with the ecosystem, I'm all for adding that compat layer! (I was just focused specifically on the reference impl only, which didn't have any websocket interface to interop with in the first place, and I wasn't aware of other established websocket impls yet). All I ask is if you can link me in here to the repo(s) so I can see the contract/protocol, etc. This is a good call-out and I'd love to interop. > > * microReticulum_Firmware supports KISS-framed WebSockets > * Reticulum-js supports both HDLc and KISS framing (configurable per interface) > * For Python there's https://github.com/nilu96/rnsWebsocketInterface Sick, thanks, I've got this on my short list now --- ## Reply 14 **CarL_PetErson** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 7:20 AM I kind of get the mixed reactions, it does sound too good to be true :D But I sure hope it is. Been looking for something like that. I imagine it would run smoothly on OpenWRT routers with limited resources right? Also looking forward to test how the upgraded AutoInterface features fare on batman adv meshes that got some multicast filtering. Those features only work prns <-> prns right? It's also capable of running standalone nodes on a nRF52840? microRNS hit some roadblocks with very limited path storage on that one, how is prns doing? Also: Are you planning to add a SocksInterface for easy usage of Tor in the future? --- ## Reply 15 **Lew** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 8:26 AM I mean, you could have built on top of the heavily tested Leviculum implementation, that has already a running T114 firmware and a no_std core… just to share the effort. --- ## Reply 16 **Zenith** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 9:39 AM **Lew** wrote: > I mean, you could have built on top of the heavily tested Leviculum implementation, that has already a running T114 firmware and a no_std core… just to share the effort. Lol, go fuck yourself. When I ran *your* vibecoded dumpsterfire of a "port", it didn't even work against the basic link examples included in the Python ref. Did you not also write this "Killing Reticulum to Save It"? ![image.png](/storage/forum/fqtYNcekClPXUlaDaQalXvXJqISJsqa5oL0OuYcP.png) https://leviculum.network/posts/killing-reticulum-to-save-it --- ## Reply 17 **joakim** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 9:44 AM That's another unfortunate outcome of vibe coding, more duplication of efforts and less collaboration. There have been ~7~ (edit: 10+) Rust implementations so far, most of which are still active. I suppose evolution will run its course and the projects that are best maintained will remain, but it does feel like a lot of time is wasted on competition that could have been spent on collaboration. The perceived efficiency gains of vibe coding doesn't add up when you consider the whole picture, so much precious time is wasted on projects that won't make it. Not to mention the maintenance nightmare. Call me old fashioned, but I don't trust any vibe coded Reticulum implementation to be correct anyway. It's hard enough for a human to *understand* the intricacies and nuances of Reticulum, let alone for a single developer relying on an LLM to understand it. --- ## Reply 18 **Lew** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 10:26 AM **Zenith** wrote: > Lol, go fuck yourself. When I ran *your* vibecoded dumpsterfire of a "port", it didn't even work against the basic link examples included in the Python ref. Did you not also write this "Killing Reticulum to Save It"? Wow, 'go fuck yourself' ... that's the aggressive conversation you prefer? Insults end every discussion. Hint: It is only possible to establish a productive community with a respectful tone and constructive criticism, even when people have different views. Insulting people drives them out our your forum, Zenith, and I assume that's your attention. With me, you are successfull. --- ## Reply 19 **Zenith** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 10:40 AM **joakim** wrote: > That's another unfortunate outcome of vibe coding, more duplication of efforts and less collaboration. There have been 7 Rust implementations so far, 5 of which are still active. I suppose evolution will run its course and the projects that are best maintained will remain, but it does feel like a lot of time is spent on competition that could have been spent on collaboration. The perceived efficiency gains of AI don't add up when you consider the whole picture, so much precious time is wasted on projects that won't make it. Nevermind the fact that most of them aren't even compatible with the reference implementation, even when they report "feature complete". Or are highly unstable and probably one of the reasons why the public network was so jank with constant path resolution failures up until interface gravity in the latest RNS versions. And I'll add this on too. Reticulum's core networking properties are derived from cryptographic functions. Cryptography and LLMs are something that should NEVER touch. The *worst* part about Reticulum IMO is it rolls its own crypto instead of using existing RFCs or something like the Noise framework. But that is more of a tradeoff to accomplish everything it does. You are hedging your entire bet on code you didn't produce and can't read. Let me remind everyone what Reticulum is. *It's a cryptographic networking stack.* Most *human people* should not be touching cryptographic primitives, let alone an LLM. Small mistakes compound into huge disasters. This vibecoding bullshit doesn't just introduce a maintenance nightmare but is a flagrant security risk. (Of course, unless you prompt Claude to do it with no mistakes and to think really really really hard about it) Also, this will all inevitability lead to fragmentation. LLMs give people the confidence to do something a skilled person can, but not the understanding or wisdom to know why it works. Someone will get a bright idea that will break interoperability with everything else and at that point, what do you even have? Why even bother with Reticulum? Go prompt Claude to make a super duper encrypted milspec quantum secure resistant gooder mesh network. We can have 9 billion of those too. This has been such a problem for this project. Slop after slop, it is enough to drive anyone up the wall. I have no idea why in particular Reticulum is such a target for this. Perhaps some type of naivety of people who go "Look I'm helping!" sitting at the keyboard prompting Codex or whatever. Or some type of ulterior motive combined with a little bit of narcissism. The last person I'm familiar with who vibecoded a Rust port went and launched a scam crypto-token semi-adjacent-but-not-really related to their project that was an obvious day 1 rugpull. Just straight up scamming people using LLM laundered code. I have no idea when enough will be enough. It is exhausting. I shouldn't have to say these things. They should be common sense. If you turn on your fucking brain for 5 minutes and think about something you should come to this same conclusion. But whatever. That's probably enough bitching for now. I'm disappointed in everything and frankly, I think humanity is cooked. --- ## Reply 20 **Zenith** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 10:59 AM **Lew** wrote: > **Zenith** wrote: > > Lol, go fuck yourself. When I ran *your* vibecoded dumpsterfire of a &quot;port&quot;, it didn&#039;t even work against the basic link examples included in the Python ref. Did you not also write this &quot;Killing Reticulum to Save It&quot;? > > Wow, 'go fuck yourself' ... that's the aggressive conversation you prefer? Insults end every discussion. > > Hint: It is only possible to establish a productive community with a respectful tone and constructive criticism, even when people have different views. > > Insulting people drives them out our your forum, Zenith, and I assume that's your attention. With me, you are successfull. Ok, bye. Here's a commit to your project, Leviculum, that is a Sloppulus of epic proportions where it's just Claude talking to itself over and over, designing some Rube Goldberg Bash script contraption to try and remove "Co-Authored by Claude" from the commit line. https://codeberg.org/Lew_Palm/Leviculum/commit/99439d7cb999c1b912dc5a95bc1f8da17b8bbd6f https://codeberg.org/Lew_Palm/Leviculum/commit/76810ff9f690d31a4afbed56a04635f7bf4a681c The diff total is more than 1000 lines. I think this is a prime example of why you should not use vibecoded Reticulum ports. But tell me more about how you are killing Reticulum to save it or whatever. --- ## Reply 21 **aetherlab** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 11:18 AM "LLMs give people the confidence to do something a skilled person can, but not the understanding or wisdom to know why it works." Totally agree and support!!! The tacit knowledge is something this sequential convergence machine, called AI, will NEVER get. People touch it and decide they have become gods of programming, empowered and capable, but they forget the simple truth - AI is a tool, that VERY CLEARLY conducts the tacit knowledge of the person using it. When there is zero understanding, humility and respect for what one starts from, the result is shit. I am not into programming, but I have fought this game with a VERY sophisticated AI auto-router for PCB's. The thing, no matter how many rules the guy against me injected onto it, failed miserably in routing a 100W HF amplifier board. And just because the guy behind the wheel had zero real understanding of what it took to make one successfully. As we say in Bulgaria - We found the problem plaguing your car! It is the bushing between the driver's seat and the steering wheel! And I want to add - Zenith's behavior is driven not by ill manners, but by the same deep and enduring sickness we get in out stomachs, when we hit against the next piece of shit, pretending to be the next Bigger Better Reticulum. So I support him wholeheartedly! --- ## Reply 22 **aetherlab** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 11:19 AM reposted by accident --- ## Reply 23 **joakim** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 12:38 PM **Zenith** wrote: > Here's a commit to your project, Leviculum, that is a Sloppulus of epic proportions where it's just Claude talking to itself over and over, designing some Rube Goldberg Bash script contraption to try and remove "Co-Authored by Claude" from the commit line. https://codeberg.org/Lew_Palm/Leviculum/commit/99439d7cb999c1b912dc5a95bc1f8da17b8bbd6f > > https://codeberg.org/Lew_Palm/Leviculum/commit/76810ff9f690d31a4afbed56a04635f7bf4a681c > > The diff total is more than 1000 lines. I think this is a prime example of why you should not use vibecoded Reticulum ports. But tell me more about how you are killing Reticulum to save it or whatever. What the actual fuck. --- ## Reply 24 **Anonymous** · Mon, Aug 10, 2026 6:58 PM Rust implementations: 1. Beechat Reticulum-rs - https://github.com/BeechatNetworkSystemsLtd/Reticulum-rs 2. LXMF-rs - https://github.com/FreeTAKTeam/LXMF-rs 3. Styrene-rs - https://github.com/styrene-lab/styrene-rs 4. ferret-rns - https://github.com/kageedwards/ferret-rns 5. hyf - https://github.com/hyfmesh/hyf 6. rsReticulum - https://github.com/ratspeak/rsReticulum 7. Rust Reticulum - https://jirijakes.com/code/rust-reticulum 8. reticulum-sdk - https://github.com/ReticulaLabs/reticulum-sdk 9. leviculum - https://codeberg.org/Lew_Palm/Leviculum 10. rns-rs - https://github.com/lelloman/rns-rs + this one, and there is probably more I haven't found yet. Some people are putting in so much effort to hide their usage of LLMs. --- ## Reply 25 **KenAKAFrosty** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 3:11 AM You should definitely be apprehensive about the cryptography implementation in any project that relies on it, this one included. But to be very clear here, I'm not doing anything novel at the primitive layer. It's not like I'm out here writing curve math by hand or something (and I'm sure as hell not having an LLM do it). Prns uses `x25519-dalek` and `ed25519-dalek`, which are highly vetted public implementations used by all sorts of respected projects in the Rust ecosystem. For example, they're the same core cryptography crates that the [Tor project uses in its low level crypto module in Arti](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/arti/-/blob/main/crates/tor-llcrypto/Cargo.toml?ref_type=heads), as well as [Signal's libsignal](https://github.com/signalapp/libsignal/blob/main/Cargo.toml). Similar story for `aes`, `cbc`, `hmac`, `sha2`, and `hkdf`. Those are all from the venerable RustCrypto crates. This project is very young and no system is perfect, but it is an outright misrepresentation if anyone reading this thread walks away thinking Prns is built on vibecoded crypto primitives. **CarL_PetErson** wrote: > I imagine it would run smoothly on OpenWRT routers with limited resources right? I have every reason to believe so, and will find out soon! I have a heltec HaLoW dongle waiting for me here on my desk, which is OpenWrt-based. Been itching to get to it! > Also looking forward to test how the upgraded AutoInterface features fare on batman adv meshes that got some multicast filtering. Those features only work prns <-> prns right? I'd have to familiarize myself more with batman-adv before I could speak to it at all, but the other rendezvous mechanisms are just Prns <-> Prns right now, yes (normal Autowifi via UDP multicast like in stock RNS is interoperable RNS <-> Prns though, just to be clear). Would love to hear what findings you run into as you explore this more too. It's definitely not the first time I've heard of batman-adv so I bet others are already wondering the same thing. > It's also capable of running standalone nodes on a nRF52840? microRNS hit some roadblocks with very limited path storage on that one, how is prns doing? Yep! The LilyGo T-Echo runs on an nRF52840. Others running on nRF52840 will still need their board-specific details wired up (I'm starting on the heltec T096 right now, for example). But the chip itself (and the vast majority of the work) is confirmed running the Hopspot firmware with BLE-auto, LoRa (with the seemingly-ubiquitous sx1262), and USB-auto interfaces, including reading a nomadnet page off of it on a nearby computer, and also while acting as a transport node between a Linux laptop and a Mac mini each sending messages and files to each other over nomadnet. The constrained size on embedded is definitely limiting. Main three ways it's currently mitigated: - using recursive path requests by default - fighting very hard to keep the data representations as compact as I possibly can - and making sure that adjusting the sizing of different parts of the engine are easy knobs to turn, so that it's both easy to adjust toward better defaults as we learn more, and easy for someone to configure for their own builds to handle their special cases. So for example one could greatly reduce resource/channel buffers since they don't expect to directly talk to that node in a way that really needs those, freeing up more room for tracking destinations for transport. Or go opposite, if the board was meant to largely exist to serve a small page or something, you might instead bump up the # of max active link sessions and accept fewer tracked transport destinations. But this is an ongoing effort open to more insight and contribution! The defaults are almost certainly not yet ideal. Right now it simply needs more eyeballs and reports from practical use cases and needs. The important part is that changing them is mostly a simple matter of flipping a few const values or type parameters while making sure the new aggregate size still fits in the budget. By no means do I consider this part mature, but it does indeed have thoughtful first legs. > Also: Are you planning to add a SocksInterface for easy usage of Tor in the future? This wasn't on my radar for the near future, but definitely open to it. Best place to start is to [open a discussion on GitHub](https://github.com/KenAKAFrosty/Prns/discussions/new/choose) beacause others are probably also right there with you on wanting this, and I think the end result would be better for it. Thanks for all the thoughtful questions! Also just a quick update for bergie: I now have the ws compatibility tracked as issue #97, and as far as I can tell right now it should be something I can start this week. --- ## Reply 26 **Zenith** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 4:28 AM > But to be very clear here, I'm not doing anything novel at the primitive layer. It's not like I'm out here writing curve math by hand or something (and I'm sure as hell not having an LLM do it). Prns uses x25519-dalek and ed25519-dalek, which are highly vetted public implementations used by all sorts of respected projects in the Rust ecosystem. For example, they're the same core cryptography crates that the Tor project uses in its low level crypto module in Arti, as well as Signal's libsignal. Similar story for aes, cbc, hmac, sha2, and hkdf. Those are all from the venerable RustCrypto crates. I never said that was the issue. Primitives and protocols are not the same. They are called "primitives" for a reason. Primitives are the building blocks used to design protocols that let us do secure encryption over a channel. The byte level operations of an Ed25519 implementation could be perfectly sound, yet *how* it's implemented might not be. This is why things like the Noise protocol exists. When I say "roll your own crypto" I am not referring to actually writing an Ed25519 implementation based on the RFC yourself. I am talking about the order of operations in which these primitives are used which defines our protocol This is much harder said than done, and it's often a great way to shoot yourself in the foot. Multiply this by 100x when you are working entirely in a black box. You don't understand the code. You don't know what it's doing. You can't even tell it "no, don't do that" because you don't have any ground truth or reference. And neither does the LLM. It spits out the statistical median for the next word in a sentence. That's what LLMs do. This is just one reason out of a thousand not to use a 100% nonsensically vibecoded port of Reticulum where there is no human in the loop who can do anything but trust the output of what Claude says. You are also outsourcing every facet of development, design, and decision making from now until perpetuity to a model you don't control, on some highly centralized corporate third party software as a service provider, whos output you don't even understand. If the model didn't exist your project wouldn't. Does that sound like digital sovereignty to you? I should not have to explain this over and over again to people. I am sick of the Reddit techbro manchild archetype shitting this project up, which will inevitably fracture it until the value Reticulum had is meaningless. This forum is a forum for Reticulum. It's not a hugbox for your digital equivalent of macaroni art powered by Claude ™️. I don't have to congratulate you or be cordial with you when what you are doing amounts to usurping the entire project. We are now on the dozenth Rust port, half vibecoded, 90% barely working. Nothing you did couldn't have been achieved with what already exists. Even if you just wanted to prooompt all day you could have contributed to something that already exists. If you argument is "look at this ecosystem toolkit harness .MD that says its 86x more faster than the Python version" "faster" as a quantifier of what? Even if this is true (it may be, but that is meaningless) weigh the fact the entire project is LITERALLY SPAT OUT FROM A BLACK BOX, WITH NO ONE UNDERSTANDING WHY OR HOW IT WORKS. I'm no Freud, but there is some arrested development manchild shit going on here. Talking to vibecode sloperators is all the same. I should not have to explain something that is this much of common sense to you. Or anyone. I will leave your post up but I discourage anyone from using this. I can't stop you from doing it, but this is a absolute disaster. Do not use this. --- ## Reply 27 **aetherlab** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 5:24 AM I think your words are falling on deaf ears, Zenith. I don't think any of the slop creators really understand either what you wrote, or where they stand psychologically. This is not about Reticulum, it will be the same in any other project or app. It is about complex compensation, like getting a big car to compensate for low self esteem. And instead AI making them whole, more powerful, truly meaningful, better selves, it makes them weaker and weaker, shining their inabilities and shortcomings more and more brightly. This is, after all, the purpose of the publicly available AI - to weaken mankind and give it a false sense of value. It works very well, this trojan horse, on the weak minded. Only people that actually have true value, be it talent or hard earned understanding and capability, will be empowered by AI, I suppose one locally fostered, hosted and ran. All else will just be more and more shit, worthless junk and dilution of quality. I second this - please, do not use this crap. It is crap. --- ## Reply 28 **Zenith** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 6:29 AM **aetherlab** wrote: > I think your words are falling on deaf ears, Zenith. I don't think any of the slop creators really understand either what you wrote, or where they stand psychologically. This is not about Reticulum, it will be the same in any other project or app. It is about complex compensation, like getting a big car to compensate for low self esteem. And instead AI making them whole, more powerful, truly meaningful, better selves, it makes them weaker and weaker, shining their inabilities and shortcomings more and more brightly. This is, after all, the purpose of the publicly available AI - to weaken mankind and give it a false sense of value. It works very well, this trojan horse, on the weak minded. Only people that actually have true value, be it talent or hard earned understanding and capability, will be empowered by AI, I suppose one locally fostered, hosted and ran. All else will just be more and more shit, worthless junk and dilution of quality. I second this - please, do not use this crap. It is crap. Yeah. We live in interesting times, for sure. Something I forgot to include in my rant is you are discarding work by other members of the community when you do this. [microReticulum](https://github.com/attermann/microReticulum), developed over the last two years ships firmware that could run on any type of ESP32 or microcontroller you could ever want. I have worked with it extensively and it is great, fully operational with the reference implementation with very few hiccups. I literally have a solar powered ESP32-S3 sitting in a little junction box with a 10 watt solar panel running a Nomad node right now. Hell you could have just pointed Claude at that. The inevitable outcome of all of this, besides the unmaintainable slop mountain and slop ouroboros, is fragmentation. "ChatGPT go add post quantum security and multicast. Also make it gooder. No mistakes". Now what do you have? Something that isn't compatible with the wire or existing protocol. Even slight divergences in the Transport logic can break the entire network, and my guess one of the contributors to why the public network was so broken prior to interface gravity changes. LLMs almost never say no or push back on things that aren't good ideas btw. It is also amazing at lying. Either you, or the model, can lead you down spirals which it self-reinforces through whatever context you have. --- ## Reply 29 **Zenith** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 8:02 AM The first commit to Prns was `b0e1b2d`, on May 26, 2026 Today is August 11th, 2026 There are 2,234 commits, representing 204 commits a week. 30 commits a day. That is almost the total number of commits to the entire Python reference implementation which's first commit was on 9a9630c on May 29th, 2016. There are TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SEVEN files tracked in the master branch There are 1500 files with the `.rs` extension non-withstanding things like dependencies or submodules. Running `git ls-files | grep -E '\.(rs)$' gives you https://pastebin.com/FKaHkWrJ `git ls-files -z '*.rs' | grep -zZv -e '^vendor/' -e '/vendor/' | xargs -0 cat | wc -m` Just looking at the character counts alone of all files with the `.rs` extension there are 12,642,864 characters. If you typed at 100 words per minute, for every day straight that would take 20 days. For files tagged with .md, there are 926,249 characters total. Character count's aren't an estimate of much, but for not even two months, do you realize how insane this is? Do you even have any background in Rust development? There are probably entire segments of this repo you haven't even looked at. It's not humanly possible. You could fit the entirety of the KJV Bible from Project Gutenberg with 3,566,480 characters including spaces 3.9x in just the total character count of whats tracked with .rs extensions excluding anything in a vendor/ folder. You could fit War and Peace in 4.1 times The initial README is also just strange, full of some of the most bizarre suggestions which probably hints at what your typical Claude conversation looked like when prooooompting Claude. This line stood out to me the most though https://github.com/KenAKAFrosty/Prns/blob/b0e1b2d73eb2cc9b4eb547eb9a6030d43ae81cdd/docs/build-ethos.md ``` That distinction draws our scope line. Link, Resource, Channel, Buffer are application-facing surfaces — an app opens a link and sends a resource; the daemon only transports the packets. So a piece of library surface earns its place in the codebase only if: daemon behavior needs it, or a named SDK consumer ships it. If neither is true, it is reference material, not code we carry. When in doubt, name the consumer out loud. If you can't, you have your answer. Between those two boundaries, the model is yours. Clean, typed, idiomatic Rust. It owes the reference nothing — not its names, not its function breakdown, not its types. ``` Yeah, just ignore all that. Why not? It's the build ethos ecosystem harness or whatever, my eyes can only glaze over this shit so much. Followed by what I can't even decipher: ``` The shape: a game engine The core is a pure tick: tick(&mut State, Input, dt) -> Effects No I/O, no clock reading, no syscalls inside the core. Time is an argument. Inbound is data. Outbound is data — typed Effects that the surrounding loop interprets, not calls the core makes itself. This is not exotic. It is the same attractor that Elm/Redux, deterministic lockstep netcode, ECS game loops, and embedded superloops all evolve toward independently. A pure function of (state, input, time) is the most testable and most portable object there is. Arriving at this shape is a sign the decomposition is natural, not forced. ``` This is some type of eldritch abomination. --- ## Reply 30 **aetherlab** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 9:47 AM This is Claude wanking quietly in the early hours... :D --- ## Reply 31 **Puint** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 10:29 AM **Anonymous** wrote: > Rust implementations: > > 1. Beechat Reticulum-rs - https://github.com/BeechatNetworkSystemsLtd/Reticulum-rs > 2. LXMF-rs - https://github.com/FreeTAKTeam/LXMF-rs > 3. Styrene-rs - https://github.com/styrene-lab/styrene-rs > 4. ferret-rns - https://github.com/kageedwards/ferret-rns > 5. hyf - https://github.com/hyfmesh/hyf > 6. rsReticulum - https://github.com/ratspeak/rsReticulum > 7. Rust Reticulum - https://jirijakes.com/code/rust-reticulum > 8. reticulum-sdk - https://github.com/ReticulaLabs/reticulum-sdk > 9. leviculum - https://codeberg.org/Lew_Palm/Leviculum > 10. rns-rs - https://github.com/lelloman/rns-rs > > + this one, and there is probably more I haven't found yet. > > Some people are putting in so much effort to hide their usage of LLMs. Despite all the shit going on in this thread, and that I might also comment later, thanks for the list. I still find it interesting to Look through. --- ## Reply 32 **joakim** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 1:15 PM **Anonymous** wrote: > Some people are putting in so much effort to hide their usage of LLMs. It's interesting that people go to great lengths to hide their good friend Claude when it's so obvious that the project was vibecoded. Are they ashamed? Afraid people won't touch it if they find out, hoping they won't? I respect that Ken is upfront about it, so people can make an informed decision. It ultimately comes down to people's good(/bad) judgment. The skill of discernment has never been more important in tech. (I had no idea there were 10+ Rust implementations, ~80% of which are vibe coded. That's crazy!) --- ## Reply 33 **nilu96** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 2:22 PM If you are not happy with vibecoded RNS implementations, don’t use them. It is as easy as that. I really don’t understand the hate here. In my opinion, agent-based coding is what gave RNS a chance, since having alternative implementations that are suitable for running in diverse environments was nearly impossible to develop from the ground up before – at least without having serious funding to pay a whole team. And alternatives to the Python-only reference are definitely needed, I think this is something we can all agree on. So basically AI is what sparked the recent community growth, that I have a feeling not everybody is happy about. But at the end of the day, RNS is a mesh protocol; its power scales directly with its node count, which inherently relies on growing the user base. Compared to projects like Meshtastic or MeshCore, RNS still demands too heavy a technical commitment to truly open up to a broader, non-technical audience. Because of that steep barrier to entry, the arguments made in the blog post "Killing Reticulum to Save It" actually ring quite true. Regarding Leviculum: I have to defend it. I have used it for a while now and it works for me (with a few hiccups, but these also occur in microReticulum and even in the reference implementation). And the most important thing: I really think that it is completely unnecessary to insult anyone. As Lew said, a productive community needs a respectful tone and constructive criticism. I just don’t get the hate. I don’t know about everyone else, but I would rather have 10 vibecoded Rust implementations than zero purely human-developed ones. Even though, of course, joakim has a point that it’s unfortunate to have more duplication of efforts and less collaboration. However, that is not something that is caused exclusively by vibecoding. Of course, there are pretty bad implementations out there, and the majority might be vibecoded, but who cares. In the end these implementations won’t be used and will not survive for long. Ultimately, the success of these projects comes down to how effectively the AI is guided, which is rapidly proving to be an entirely new skill of its own. For my part, I am excited to have a look at the Prns project! And time will tell if this is something that sticks. --- ## Reply 34 **joakim** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 3:31 PM **nilu96** wrote: > If you are not happy with vibecoded RNS implementations, don’t use them. It is as easy as that. I really don’t understand the hate here. Being implementations of a mesh networking protocol, they end up causing issues on the network for everybody. > In my opinion, agent-based coding is what gave RNS a chance, since having alternative implementations that are suitable for running in diverse environments was nearly impossible to develop from the ground up before – at least without having serious funding to pay a whole team. Ivan begs to differ. Reticulum-Go is the most mature port of RNS so far. He does use AI for non-critical tasks, but it's [intelligent use of AI](https://github.com/Quad4-Software/Reticulum-Go#ai-disclaimer) (132f67e79d9b24aad014e93015fb858f:/page/repo.mu`g=public|r=Reticulum-Go|anchor=ai-disclaimer), not vibecoded. And it shows on the timeline of commits and the quality of the implementation. Atterman begs to differ. AFAICT, microReticulum is the most stable and conforming implementation for microcontrollers. > But at the end of the day, RNS is a mesh protocol; its power scales directly with its node count, which inherently relies on growing the user base. Growth and power are not things we should strive for. IMO, slow growth is a virtue. Quality over quantity. Also relevant: [This is not a teahouse](https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/blob/master/This%20Is%20Not%20a%20Teahouse.md) (a8d24177d946de4f1f0a0fe1af9a1338:/page/work_doc.mu`g=reticulum|r=reticulum|id=4) > And the most important thing: I really think that it is completely unnecessary to insult anyone. As Lew said, a productive community needs a respectful tone and constructive criticism. I agree. > I don’t know about everyone else, but I would rather have 10 vibecoded Rust implementations than zero purely human-developed ones. False dichotomy. > Of course, there are pretty bad implementations out there, and the majority might be vibecoded, but who cares. I *do* care that there are so many shitty implementations of Reticulum out there. It hurts the network and it hurts Reticulum's reputation. I'd rather have a handful of hand-written implementations than the slopfest that we have now, even if it took years instead of days. More ≠ better. --- ## Reply 35 **KenAKAFrosty** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 3:42 PM Zenith, at this point your replies are just disingenuous to anyone who reads this thread. **Zenith** wrote: > I never said that was the issue. Yes, you did. Your words: **Zenith** wrote: > Most *human people* should not be touching cryptographic primitives, let alone an LLM. The point you later pivoted to (it's how the primitives are used) is a valid one which I'll address in a moment. **Zenith** wrote: > Do you even have any background in Rust development? Yes, that's why I chose it. **Zenith** wrote: > This forum is a forum for Reticulum. Yeah I'd love that. That's what I'm trying actively to engage in, despite your foaming at the mouth about AI usage. **So for fuck's sake, *let's talk about Reticulum*.** Under all the ranting, the only major technical thing you actually spoke to was this **Zenith** wrote: > I am talking about the order of operations in which these primitives are used which defines our protocol That's also the kind of discussion that a community of enthusiasts would probably be interested in and benefit from anyway, right? So let's discuss. What are the specific Reticulum crypto operations that you believe Prns is misassembling? - Key splitting? First half is signing, second half is encryption - Mode select? With a 32 byte key AES-128-CBC is selected; 64 byte key, AES-256-CBC - Layout? Prns also follws the iv(16) || CBC(PKCS7(pt)) || HMAC(32) layout - MAC coverage? It's HMAC over iv || ciphertext - Order? Prns does encrypt-then-MAC, and verify MAC before decrypt - Padding? PKCS7, always pads - MAC comparison? Okay yeah I guess we do diverge here. Prns uses a constant-time verify while the reference uses Python's `==` comparison. But obviously that was intentional to be strictly safer. If not about token construction, then maybe Identity encryption? - DH target? ephemeral X25519 private key against the recipient identity's public key (or ratchet) - Key derivation? HKDF-SHA256, 64-byte output. The salt is recipiient's identity hash, empty context - The ratchet subtlety maybe? Prns is the same here too. encrypting to a ratchet, only DH target changes. HKDF salt stays the identity hash - Layout? also same as the reference, ephemeral_pub(32) || token Link establishment? - link_id? truncated sha-256 of the link request's hashable part (with MTU signalling bytes trimmed off first). same as reference - Session key? HKDF-SHA256 over the ECDH shared secret. salt is link_id, empty context. 64B ooutput for the AES-256 mode the reference defaults to - the proof? responder signs link_id || its encryption pub || its signing pub || signalling bytes with its Ed25519 identity key. initiator validates that against destination's identity - Per-message crypto? session-key token per packet, same token construction as above, same as the reference Announce signing? - Signed data? destination_hash || publc key || name_hash || random_hash || ratchet (when present) || app_data - random_hash? 10-byte field that's actually 5 random bytes plus 5 time-derived bytes. - Ratchet field? Same optional 32byte field in the same position (after random_hash, before the signature). covered by the signature Or perhaps packet hashing? - hashable part? flags byte masked to its low nibble, hops byte skpped, and for HEADER_2 packets the 16-byte transport ID is skipped too. - packet hash itself? full 32-byte sha256 of the hashable part; where a truncated packet hash is required, first 16 bytes - proofs? signature covers full 32-byte packet hash. explicit is 32 byte packet hash plus 64 byte signature, implicit is the signature alone. Derivations? - public identity? X25519_pub(32) || Ed25519_pub(32) - identity hash? first 16 bytes of sha-256(public identity) - name hash? it's the first 10 bytes of sha256(expanded_dotted_name_utf8) - SINGLE destination hash? first 16 bytes of sha256(name_hash || identity_hash). PLAIN detinations are the same but without the identity hash None of this even has to be my word against yours, by the way. It *shouldn't* be. The validation suite litearlly runs stock RNS 1.4.2 as a live oracle. Prns encrypts and the reference implementation decrypts, and vice-versa. All of that across message sizes from empty through block boundaries to MDU, plus a matrix of corrupted and truncated tokens both sides must reject. Let alone the part where all the code is public. Anyone can go verify it for themselves and draw their own conclusions. (Side note: Issues/PRs/reports about any of these kinds of things being incorrect are highly appreciated and taken very seriously. I really care, and I want this to be *good*) Anyway, these are the kinds of technical discussions I looked forward to, which is why I posted here in the first place. I hope that we can all continue to have them. --- ## Reply 36 **Nickie** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 4:50 PM **KenAKAFrosty** wrote: > Zenith, at this point your replies are just disingenuous to anyone who reads this thread. Just speak for youself, would you? No one authorized you to speak for "anyone". > Anyway, these are the kinds of technical discussions I looked forward to, which is why I posted here in the first place. I hope that we can all continue to have them. > Do you honestly expect living breathing humans to go elbow-deep into this piece of slop and provide feedback so you can feed it to the LLM once more so it can churn out more cruft? Yes, this forum is for Reticulum. This contraption is anything but Reticulum. --- ## Reply 37 **aetherlab** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 5:01 PM I second Nickie on both points! I find Zenith's replies very on point and your will to push your crap mutant slop onto the community as some kind of blessing, that commands everyone's attention and absolutely should engage them into bathing in your crap and trying to understand what the hell Claude wanked about truly vomit inducing. Why don't you stop for a second and consider yourself at fault for once? Why don't you step out of your path and at least exercise the notion, that we might be right?! No, you prefer to childishly insist on... --- ## Reply 38 **Professor_Boop** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 5:13 PM **joakim** wrote: > Growth and power are not things we should strive for. IMO, slow growth is a virtue. Quality over quantity. > I'd rather have a handful of hand-written implementations than the slopfest that we have now, even if it took years instead of days. More ≠ better. I agree that quality of quantity is a good idea. I agree with Mark's sentiment that if you're touching networking code that's going to used by millions of people that "you better fucking know what you're doing" (paraphrased) I do however worry about the quick rise of AI backed authoritarianism that we may only have a shrinking window of opportunity to build and implement a large scale Reticulum network before its not possible anymore. I worry that we might all be letting perfect be the enemy of good. I worry that with the sentiment of "even if it took years rather than days" it could result in Reticulum becoming the next Gnu/Hurd; interesting technology that's always being worked on but never actually being released in any meaningful capacity. I understand that there is an inherent cognitive dissonance between those two thoughts that I don't know how to reconcile. I do however think that while it's important to keep code quality high, insulting people doesn't make for a welcoming community nor fosters cooperation. If we just constantly gatekeep people and gain a reputation that the Reticulum community is toxic, it will push people away and the project will stagnate. That leads to my next point: wtf is the point of building a tool like Reticulum if no-one actually uses it? Isn't people actually using it the central point, or is Reticulum just our fun little toy to theorize and debate about just to tickle our 'tisms for our own amusement? --- ## Reply 39 **bergie** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 5:57 PM **Professor_Boop** wrote: > That leads to my next point: wtf is the point of building a tool like Reticulum if no-one actually uses it? I think there's two ways to look at Reticulum: one is a global mesh network, and the other is a local, personal one. My perspective is more from the latter side, as we spend most of our time without internet uplink in remote locations where there aren't many we could mesh with. At most I've seen 3 other boats with Meshtastic in the same atoll as us. In this scenario, Reticulum is useful as long as it allows us to do things. I can interact with out boat's rngit repositories over LoRa from the beach. The collaborative editing tools I'm developing can similarly sync state over the boat WiFi, or over LoRa, or even internet when that's available. Basically everything we do with Reticulum works without anybody else in the mesh, though they'll work even better when there are others: possible LoRa transport nodes in places we sail, internet-based store-and-forward messaging nodes for when we have uplink. And of course if Reticulum is more popular, we have the possibility of collaborating and talking over it with people outside of the boat and crew. First we worry about Reticulum working well within the sphere we can influence (by deploying a higher-up transport node on the boat, building more software we need), and only then about whether it works in a wider context. There's of course the classical (and likely not fully correct) "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" aspect. If Reticulum is popular, people will find and fix problems. And there will be more apps than just the things we build for ourselves. That all said, it wouldn't hurt to have a more polite discussion culture here. But then again this is the Internet ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ --- ## Reply 40 **CarL_PetErson** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 6:26 PM Ok, so it was too good to be true. But who changed the thread title? It was Ken right? --- ## Reply 41 **BoPha** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 6:31 PM We've crossed the Rubicon with LLM coding. We don't need to embrace the slop, but we need to figure out how to shape these projects. Shaming will only drive the projects from this forum and change nothing, leading to further fragmentation. --- ## Reply 42 **Ivan** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 6:49 PM This is so tiresome. I think you would be better off donating the price of that Claude, Gemini, or GPT subscription to Mark instead. Do you really trust an LLM to output Rust code free of complex logic issues? I hope you are ready to bear the consequences when you compromise people's privacy and security, or when you disrupt the public network because of a flaw the LLM missed. This is just another black box implementation. The part of the community that hasn't lost its mind has every right to be pissed and exhausted. This nonsense keeps happening over and over again. --- ## Reply 43 **SevenFourTwo** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 6:52 PM **CarL_PetErson** wrote: > But who changed the thread title? It was Ken right? I was assuming it was Zenith --- ## Reply 44 **Anonymous** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 7:10 PM **SevenFourTwo** wrote: > **CarL_PetErson** wrote: > > But who changed the thread title? It was Ken right? > > I was assuming it was Zenith Changing the title of someone's post because you disagree with them is just straight up toxic. Isn't this supposed to be a professional and welcoming community? This will just drive more people away from the community and project. --- ## Reply 45 **joakim** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 7:26 PM **@Professor_Boop** I share your concerns, but we see things differently. As it says on the website, Reticulum is not *one* network, it's a tool for building thousands of networks. Lots of people are already building real networks around the world. The technology enabling it is here and it's ready. What is lacking is more people doing it. I can't see how rushing more vibecoded implementations would help with that, we have a complete Python implementation and high-quality C++ and Go ports nearing full feature parity. To be clear, building networks is *complicated*, and Reticulum doesn't dumb things down to appeal to the masses. It requires you to understand how it works because that's what it takes to build good network infrastructure. That barrier to entry is by design. It builds competence, independence, resilience and other -ence words. https://reticulum.network/manual/zen.html#personal-infrastructure (a8d24177d946de4f1f0a0fe1af9a1338:/page/blob.mu`g=reticulum|r=reticulum|ref=HEAD|path=Zen+of+Reticulum.md|anchor=personal-infrastructure) The existing Reticulum networks and their operators, with all their knowledge and skills, are ready for when people will need them. We do need more people building networks, but that's a people problem, not a technical problem for Claude to solve. https://reticulum.network/manual/zen.html#the-work-is-finished (a8d24177d946de4f1f0a0fe1af9a1338:/page/blob.mu`g=reticulum|r=reticulum|ref=HEAD|path=Zen+of+Reticulum.md|anchor=the-work-is-finished) > I do however think that while it's important to keep code quality high, insulting people doesn't make for a welcoming community nor fosters cooperation. If we just constantly gatekeep people and gain a reputation that the Reticulum community is toxic, it will push people away and the project will stagnate. Yeah. I don't think the project itself would stagnate, but you're right about the reputation. --- ## Reply 46 **joakim** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 7:34 PM **Anonymous** wrote: > Changing the title of someone's post because you disagree with them is just straight up toxic. Isn't this supposed to be a professional and welcoming community? This will just drive more people away from the community and project. The Reticulum project doesn't have an official forum, this is an unofficial one that Zenith created for the community. --- ## Reply 47 **Nickie** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 7:39 PM **Anonymous** wrote: > **SevenFourTwo** wrote: > > **CarL_PetErson** wrote: > > &gt; But who changed the thread title? It was Ken right? > > > > I was assuming it was Zenith > > Changing the title of someone's post because you disagree with them is just straight up toxic. Isn't this supposed to be a professional and welcoming community? This will just drive more people away from the community and project. You know what else is toxic? Playing the "toxic positivity" game like most sloperators and their sympathizers do here. I have no issues with Zenith's "toxicity" whatsoever. It's well placed and has solid arguments. If that toxicity helps drive away the slop - all the more power to that "toxicity". Notice how none of those "creators" ever address the points they are confronted with. They just get offended with toxicity. What, no one even visited the commit links Zenith posted? Doesn't the content of those links bother you, people? It's downright sinister if you bother to read it a few times. It's probably pretty simple: most people just don't care in the slightest about the topic at hand, they are just too well-mannered to discourage someone and rain on their parade. But it doesn't work that way. But some people like Zenith here have the guts to speak out and call bs when it looks and smells like one. That Ken Frosty guy admitted he has a background of rust programming, yet none of his EIGHTY (80!) github repos have any rust projects. And don't get me started on that Lew guy. We aren't going to build any "community" with a gazillion of half-baked reticulum implementations. Nor am I interested in a community where pathologic narcissist liars are running the show and a crowd of anonymous'es are cheering for them to slop-on. I will eagerly partake in a toxic community of people shooting it straight. Any day. --- ## Reply 48 **Zenith** · Tue, Aug 11, 2026 7:43 PM "Gatekeeping", "toxic", these are words that are utterly meaningless and used more like magical incantations than anything else. Some things are meant to be gatekept. Not everyone with a Claude Code subscription should be vibing out a Rust port of a networking stack with tons of moving parts every other month. I'm not a luddite and I am not against LLMs. Probably 80% of your entire codebase has never been glanced over by human eyes. It's literally, mathematically impossible. See my post earlier analyzing just the sheer quantity of slop produced. Do you want to "add value" to Reticulum? Go touch grass and build things. Build a LoRa network. HaLow is looking pretty cool these days too. Go find people who are interested in that, talk to them (scary) and setup a network for your region. If you argument is "well the tools didn't exist to do that" - that's bullshit. There are dozens, and dozens, and dozens, and dozens of tools and firmware and targets for any type of LoRa device under the sun that exist and are a Google search away. You don't need to spend 4 weeks vibecoding a Rust port to do this. I am so sick of hearing these words like "accessibility" and "gatekeeping" and "toxicity" which are all *meaingless*. The tools to build the things you want are right there. Even the Python ref can run a full public facing Transport node on a Haiku virtualbox machine at 512 MB of memory and 1 CPU core assigned to it. It took 15 minutes to setup and a pip install of `rnspure`. I literally do not know what else you could want. A spare e-waste laptop could run one. And yes, Python. Ew, icky, but what is the alternative? Shit that no one knows how it works and is coded entirely through a blind process? Yeah. Great. And this isn't even mentioning the other dozen Rust ports. Or the Go port and C++ port made by actually dedicated members of the community who have sunk their fucking time in to it for years. Not done in a 3 week Claude Code session by someone who is the archetypal Dunning-Kruger redditor combo. --- ## Reply 49 **Professor_Boop** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 1:10 AM **@joakim** I appreciate you being thoughtful and considerate responding in a way that allows for me to consider a perspective with more nuance. Thank you. **@Zenith** Did you change the thread title? If so, why? Would you find it appropriate if someone changed your own words to interject their own opinion about something? --- ## Reply 50 **aetherlab** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 3:38 AM **Professor_Boop** wrote: > **@Zenith** > Did you change the thread title? If so, why? Would you find it appropriate if someone changed your own words to interject their own opinion about something? After all said and proof of slop given and no meaningful response on behalf of the "author" THIS is what's you problem?! He changed the name so it responds to the TRUTH. I think he was VERY patient and took a lot of time proving a point, while the "author" did not prove anything, instead of just deleting the manchild slop excursion. I would have. Why is everyone pointing in all other directions, and not to the shitty code?! --- ## Reply 51 **Rudi Mentaire** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 5:29 AM > Why is everyone pointing in all other directions, and not to the shitty code?! Because people behaving like, using language like that, are wrong or don't have good arguments most of the time. That's just experience. And if you are opposing this kind of usage of AI in that way, you are completely failing. The discussion has already diverged from the original subjects. Others have mentioned other reasons. You just don't want to accept them. --- ## Reply 52 **aetherlab** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 6:33 AM **Rudi Mentaire** wrote: > > Why is everyone pointing in all other directions, and not to the shitty code?! > > Because people behaving like, using language like that, are wrong or don't have good arguments most of the time. That's just experience. And if you are opposing this kind of usage of AI in that way, you are completely failing. The discussion has already diverged from the original subjects. Others have mentioned other reasons. You just don't want to accept them. Let's break down: 1) People blunt and straightforward are wrong by definition? Get lost. 2) Don't have good arguments most of the time? What the fuck are you talking about? Zenith had all the arguments and demonstrated the total crap-iness of the slop. You have zero FACTUAL AND OBJECTIVE arguments AGAINST Zenith's position, beside his way of calling things with their proper names, something all utterly incapable people denounce as politically incorrect. Whole generations turned into whining mush... 3) That's just experience? Talk for yourself. ONLY for yourself. In my experience all incapable, lazy and self righteous people hide behind a vale of exaggerated positivity, very high, albeit totally hollow self-esteem, couch-warrior passive aggressiveness, total inability to objectively defend their position by any means, other than attacking the opponent with a bouquet of subjectiveness, etc. That's just my experience. 4) And if you are opposing this kind of usage of AI in that way, you are completely failing? WHAT WAY? What the hell are you referring to? Leaving it unattended to wank code on it's own and running it without any real understanding of what it does? Are you implying THIS IS THE FUTURE?! THIS DESTROYS THE ART OF CODING, undermines it in so many ways, this is ENSHITIFICATION at it's best! And you stand with it? I have one thing to say to you - thank GOD there are people like Mark, Zenith, Nickie, that might be edgy and blunt, but actually create meaningful, real, thought trough and valuable programs. If all coders were like you, this world would have ground to a halt looong ago. Child, go play in a sandbox. And keep your "code" in it with you. It is dangerously childish and can hurt someone. 5) The discussion has already diverged from the original subjects? Mmmmno. It has converged on the real topic - deficiencies of arrested manchild development and it's hallucinogenic excursions. 6) Others have mentioned other reasons? Hu? Reasons for what? To go ahead and create more slop? To bunch up manchildren into a compact quire of whining mass, that subjectively defends it's own meaninglessness? You cannot cancel truths. And the truth is, there is still not a single Bigger Better Reticulum. Only shit code and shit talk. If you want to be for real, go and deep dive into the code, learn it, use it, build tools to understand for real. This is how you gain the tacit knowledge and become valuable. Not by asking AI to replace all the effort, years of dedication and true understanding with a mush of shit. I have been deep into radio electronics since 1993, 33 years now! And I still learn shit and sometimes fail. Because there is theory, there is practice, and than there is life. Laziness will not get you event trough the theory part. And rudimentary knowledge of Reticulum will not qualify you as anything, but a grateful obeserver/basic user. --- ## Reply 53 **Anonymous** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 6:50 AM *Insults are the weapons of the weak.* Let me tell you something: Humans write worse code than LLMs. Yeah, that hurts, doesn’t it? By the way, are you ever going to release the source code for this forum? You are, of course, entitled to your opinion like everybody here. But your freedom of speech does not give your opinion more weight than anyone else’s, nor does it give you a licence to insult people who disagree with you. *Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed; you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realise that your mind is complicit in the provocation. This is why it is essential not to respond impulsively to impressions: take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.* With all due respect, and to put it plainly: **we don’t really care what you think about LLMs**. No offence. It clearly matters a great deal to you, then fine, good for you. Then make it a forum policy that promoting LLM-based projects is not allowed. At least that way, we can avoid having to deal with you getting angry and disrespectful every time someone comes here to show off something they have “built”, no matter how. Even if what you are fighting for is a righteous cause (*and I personally believe there are legitimate concerns here, but that is merely my opinion and beside the point*) the way you are fighting for it is doing your cause **no favours**. Attacking and insulting people because they do not share your position does not make your argument stronger; **it makes people less inclined to listen to it**. So please find another way to make your case, or simply ignore these threads. You’ll be doing everyone (spoiler: *including your own cause*) a favour. Can we come back to the original topic now ? --- ## Reply 54 **Rudi Mentaire** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 7:28 AM Bravo, aetherlab, bravo. You made it look like your position is a minority position of idiots. I share your position more or less 100%, and you are attacking those that share your opinion. You make it literally impossible to agree to you. You did not even know my opinion. Doesn't matter to you anyway. And yes, there were very good and absolutely plausible and convincing reasons given against AI use here. And then some came with their fucking capital letters and barfing and made it all look like bullshit. --- ## Reply 55 **Zenith** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 7:36 AM **Anonymous** wrote: > *Insults are the weapons of the weak.* > > Let me tell you something: Humans write worse code than LLMs. Yeah, that hurts, doesn’t it? By the way, are you ever going to release the source code for this forum? > > You are, of course, entitled to your opinion like everybody here. But your freedom of speech does not give your opinion more weight than anyone else’s, nor does it give you a licence to insult people who disagree with you. > > *Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed; you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realise that your mind is complicit in the provocation. This is why it is essential not to respond impulsively to impressions: take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.* > > With all due respect, and to put it plainly: **we don’t really care what you think about LLMs**. No offence. It clearly matters a great deal to you, then fine, good for you. Then make it a forum policy that promoting LLM-based projects is not allowed. At least that way, we can avoid having to deal with you getting angry and disrespectful every time someone comes here to show off something they have “built”, no matter how. > > Even if what you are fighting for is a righteous cause (*and I personally believe there are legitimate concerns here, but that is merely my opinion and beside the point*) the way you are fighting for it is doing your cause **no favours**. Attacking and insulting people because they do not share your position does not make your argument stronger; **it makes people less inclined to listen to it**. > > So please find another way to make your case, or simply ignore these threads. You’ll be doing everyone (spoiler: *including your own cause*) a favour. > > Can we come back to the original topic now ? "I may have let people walk all over me, fuck me over, and generally do horrible, aimless, stupid shit, but at least I wasn't ***mean***!" No, no dude. You are the worst type of person in this world and why it's all gone to hell. Not one person has actually brought up any anything else besides that I'm being "Rude" and "mean" for not wanting the 11th vibecoded, horrible, dumpsterfire that is genuinely done in bad faith and instead have focused on my "mean words". I don't care. You care more about this bizarre abstract concept of Reticulum than you do the actual thing. > Then make it a forum policy that promoting LLM-based projects is not allowed. https://rns.recipes/forum/showcase/rules-and-requirements-for-llmai-assisted-projects I made this post nearly 2 weeks ago. This project does not qualify under any of the criteria. That isn't some subjective quantifier I pulled out of my ass either. It is absolutely unmaintainable in it's current state. See the post I made a few pages back. It isn't just the use of LLMs. It's the fact it is solely coded by a incestuous feedback loop of Claude Code sessions talking to eachother or something, which I guess the new buzzword for is "agentic coding". There are one thousand five hundred tracked .rs files totalling 14 million characters all generated by a machine. You could fit War and Peace in there 4 and a half times. I guarantee you there are parts of this project that a human has never even looked at. But you don't care though. It was never really about that in the first place. --- ## Reply 56 **aetherlab** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 7:43 AM Cannot blame me for getting you backwards Rudi, can you? It is very fine in the balance, if you look at your reply! Is it a response or a proponse? So I thought, as this conversation has gone up to now, this was your opinion. I really haven't seen you stand much behind mine anyway, not up to now. So I did a mistake, I do admit I did, at least at who I pointed it. Not sure about the minority position of idiots, though. Are you? :) --- ## Reply 57 **Anonymous** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 7:50 AM @zenith: Thanks for sharing your science. You do seem to be quite the outlier here among us poor, stupid mortals. It almost looks like some kind of kink for you to belittle people simply because they don’t share your uniquely enlightened way of thinking. The funny thing is, I firmly believe you’re right about the project itself. I actually share much of your assessment. What I don’t appreciate is the way you choose to express it and treat the people involved. You’re a moderator of this forum. If you believe projects like this should not be showcased here, make it a clear policy (as many other open-source projects are doing) and enforce it without doing a fuss everytime (find another way to get your dopamine shot!). If a project doesn’t meet the criteria, close the thread and explain why. That would be a much more mature and constructive way of handling this than turning every such thread into an opportunity to berate people. I don’t come to these forums to be educated about AI or told what I’m supposed to consider “good” or “bad”. The world is rarely that binary, and neither is this. It’s a spectrum. Good things may come out of a vibe-coded project; terrible things may come out of carefully hand-written code. We can discuss maintainability, code quality, provenance and reviewability on their merits without pretending that any of us possesses some infallible scientific truth about where all of this leads. I guarantee you there are parts of this project that a human has never even looked at. No, you don’t guarantee that. You strongly suspect it, perhaps with very good reasons, but you don’t know it. Please stop presenting things you cannot establish as facts. It undermines an otherwise perfectly legitimate technical argument. > But you don’t care though. I actually do care. I just happen to be somewhat more inclined to let people show what they have built without immediately passing judgement on them as people. We’re grown-ups (erm… wait!). We can look at a project, examine its code, decide whether it is useful, maintainable, trustworthy or complete rubbish, and make up our own minds. We don’t need you to protect us from it, nor do we need your particularly virulent version of “science” delivered alongside personal contempt. Again: I think you have a point about the project, I am not 100% sure. I just wish you would make that point without treating everyone who approaches the subject differently as an idiot. --- ## Reply 58 **Sage** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 7:57 AM **Anonymous** wrote: > @zenith: Thanks for sharing your science. You do seem to be quite the outlier here among us poor, stupid mortals. It almost looks like some kind of kink for you to belittle people simply because they don’t share your uniquely enlightened way of thinking. You are a slobbering ape. --- ## Reply 59 **Anonymous** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 8:01 AM There is another thing that bothers me about this whole discussion, and it should be my last post about it. The use of AI to write code is not something you can reliably establish simply by looking at the end result. People on these forums may already be using AI to write bits and pieces of code without you even knowing it. Perhaps you used AI to write the code for this forum. It still hasn’t been released, after all… are you busy making it look like a human wrote it? OK, sorry. That was inappropriate and sarcastic. But admit it: **it is incredibly easy to make that kind of accusation when this is the standard of evidence we are willing to accept**. More seriously, projects you love, praise and use every day may already contain code written with the assistance of AI, **without you having the slightest idea**. And that is precisely my point. Unless there is actual evidence or disclosure, there is often a blurred line between human-written, AI-assisted and AI-generated code. Trying to determine authorship from the code itself quickly becomes **speculation**. As long as that uncertainty exists, I find it largely pointless to spend so much energy arguing about who or what wrote the code. Judge the code. Is it maintainable? Is it correct? Is it secure? Can people understand it? Can it be reviewed? Does the project have people willing and able to maintain it? Those are questions we can actually discuss based on evidence. And frankly, I find them far more interesting than trying to guess whether Claude or any other stochastic parrot was sitting behind the keyboard. --- ## Reply 60 **aetherlab** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 8:01 AM OMG! This would be the perfect final of this conversation! :D XD Good one, Sage! --- ## Reply 61 **Zenith** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 8:12 AM **Anonymous** wrote: > There is another thing that bothers me about this whole discussion, and it should be my last post about it. > > The use of AI to write code is not something you can reliably establish simply by looking at the end result. People on these forums may already be using AI to write bits and pieces of code without you even knowing it. > > Perhaps you used AI to write the code for this forum. It still hasn’t been released, after all… are you busy making it look like a human wrote it? OK, sorry. That was inappropriate and sarcastic. But admit it: **it is incredibly easy to make that kind of accusation when this is the standard of evidence we are willing to accept**. > > More seriously, projects you love, praise and use every day may already contain code written with the assistance of AI, **without you having the slightest idea**. > > And that is precisely my point. > > Unless there is actual evidence or disclosure, there is often a blurred line between human-written, AI-assisted and AI-generated code. Trying to determine authorship from the code itself quickly becomes **speculation**. > > As long as that uncertainty exists, I find it largely pointless to spend so much energy arguing about who or what wrote the code. > > Judge the code. Is it maintainable? Is it correct? Is it secure? Can people understand it? Can it be reviewed? Does the project have people willing and able to maintain it? > > Those are questions we can actually discuss based on evidence. And frankly, I find them far more interesting than trying to guess whether Claude or any other stochastic parrot was sitting behind the keyboard. I have re-iterated over, and over, and over again it's not merely the presence of LLM generated code. It's the fact that this entire project is. Literally 100% of it. And likewise for dozens of other Sloppulus AI vibed Reticulum "ports" that are sitting on the Internet that don't even work with the reference implementation or are actively hostile to the network due to broken transport logic. There is a slopcoded LXMF Rust "port" where the fields are fucking flipped backwards that makes it absolutely unusable with anything else. This is the file list for everything tagged with the .rs extension. Read my post earlier back in the thread. It is genuinely IMPOSSIBLE to do this. There are 1500 files tracked. How am I going to judge if its secure to run on my computer? Or the quality of the code? Outsource that to yet another LLM? Great idea. And eventually I'll just outsource everything to Claude. https://pastebin.com/FKaHkWrJ --- ## Reply 62 **metrafonic** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 11:07 AM AI coding should not be a black/white issue. Its really a spectrum. There is dogshit code, good code, and everything in-between. The fact that people point out the absurdity of this codebase should not be a polarizing issue. Shit code is shit code. People get all tribal about defending the AI agents that created it. AI is super useful for people that **know** how to code, those that are careful and understand what they are doing. AI is super damaging to people that **do not** know how to code properly. Dunning-Kruger is real folks. People have pointed out that this code is **most likely shit**, with sugar coating on top. Why not just accept that? --- ## Reply 63 **welo** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 2:39 PM Someone pinch me when there's a good rust implementation that I can trust to not break, leak my ssh keys and be maintained after 3 months. --- ## Reply 64 **KenAKAFrosty** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 7:19 PM **All of these accusations about quality are not pointing to anything about the actual code itself, as it is today.** It's about the *notion* that its size means it's fundamentally impossible for a human to review, therefore it MUST be machine vomit. Is it, though? I won't ask you to believe *me*. I'm just asking you to critically think about *the claim*. The soundbite is "4.1x the size of War and Peace". All put together, the implication is that in 10 weeks, reading War and Peace 4.1x is unthinkable; so absurdly beyond human limitations that it's laughable. But how long does it take to read War and Peace? For an average adult, the silent reading rate is [238 words per minute](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749596X19300786); 183/minute when reading aloud. English translations of War and Peace (using these because the cited study was English readers) seem to average around 580,000 words. That lands around 40 hours of reading time, which aligns in the ballpark of this [audiobook version](https://www.audible.com/pd/War-and-Peace-Audiobook/B002V0PVJC) at ~61 hours (the reading aloud vs silent ratio above) 40 hours. One typical work week. So "4.1x the size of War and Peace" would mean a little over 4 weeks. Out of 10. And that's at a pace where you're taking 2 whole days off per week, and strictly limiting yourself to a normal workday's 8 hours. Not to mention this is the reading rate of an *average adult*. Nothing to say of a skilled professional reading work that exists in their domain. Not only is that *very* humanly possible, that leaves nearly 60% of the time beyond just reading. **6 entire work weeks of surplus**. Working on architecture, data modeling, API design, and correcting the inevitably stupid outputs, all fit comfortably in that surplus. Especially considering my efforts weren't limited to the typical 9-5 work week. **It is not absurd. Far from it.** The adjacent implication is that I have no idea about Reticulum, nor the codebase. The work I've done is deeply human-in-the-loop. This is not "Black box, fuck it, YOLO, ship it.". The constant human review is what brought it to where it is today. That same constant human review is why I was able to catch, verify, build a minimal repro, outline the fix, and report on the vulnerability that became Mark's 1.3.8 update of RNS. **That vuln gave a single person to ability to DoS virtually everyone on any network they connect to**, with trivially crafted malicious packets. Mark took the email I sent to him seriously, and got it fixed extremely promptly which was very much appreciated. **Hell, you don't even have to leave this website to see the traces of my caring and understanding.** The same constant human review is why I had the understanding to help with [this breakage reported by another user](https://rns.recipes/forum/help/error-error-while-handling-path-request-the-contained-exception-was-division-by-zero), which became part of RNS's 1.4.2 update. The same constant human review is why I was able to engage in [this rich and meaningful technical discussion](https://rns.recipes/forum/general/thoughts-about-unidirectional-connections-especially-in-lora-networks) in service of solving the real problems of Reticulum users. The same constant human review is why I could contribute to [a community discussion about a shared standard for a BLE interface](https://rns.recipes/forum/general/zero-config-ble-protocol-status). The same constant human review is why I had the understanding to create a [video for non-technical folks to better understand the basics of how announces & routing work in Reticulum](https://rns.recipes/forum/build-guides/reticulum-fyi-part-1-how-do-announces-work-in-reticulum-rns). You might notice some of these were posted before the Prns repo even began. My engaged learning about Reticulum, and deep care about understanding it well, had already started quite a bit before the port started. **The message that I have no understanding of Reticulum, or my own code, is simply wrong.** **The message that I want to fragment the ecosystem is also simply wrong.** 4 pages, 63 replies, inside of 3 days on this thread. Many long replies. And yet, from everyone telling you this codebase is pure slop, there was only one (1!) actual technical concern about *this codebase*. It was basically "Commands are dumb, why would anyone do that instead of methods". That post that was quickly deleted by its author, which is telling. But regardless, it was immortalized in someone else's reply to that post. So I responded clearly why that was chosen. If you disagree with that *technical decision*, that *API decision*, then right on! That's a good discussion. When it was then implied that LLMs involved meant the crypto primitives were in question, I responded explaining precisely which implementations of the primitves are used. When the goalpost then shifted to implying that this codebase fucks up the order of crypto operations in Reticulum, I addressed those as well. I laid out 25 different crypto operations and how Prns handles them. All compliant with the reference implementation. I asked, "What are the specific Reticulum crypto operations that you believe Prns is misassembling?" And as you can see for yourself, I got silence. Well, more like a Wattpad for ranting about AI with a bonus of industrial-grade projection cast onto me and others. But, critically, no response to the items of that technical question. Not one. One side's giving you a bunch of flowery viscious language, filled with generalities and "probably"s, telling you how you should feel about this project based on **their vibes**, while dodging any real technical discussion. Meanwhile I've continued to explain the process, the decisions that went in, while citing sources, and respectfully presenting information & resources to everyone so they can make their own decisions. Of course, it's your choice who to believe. **It is cheap to spew bullshit**. Making things up costs very little time. It doesn't have to be accurate, or even internally consistent. When challenged, you can just misdirect and spew more. Correcting that nonsense is *extremely* time consuming. This is the last time I engage in that asymmetry. Just like Mark quotes on [his contact page](https://unsigned.io/contact.html): > Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. To those who are excited about the project (or at least *were* until you read the onslaught of falsehoods spammed into this thread), the code is [on GitHub](https://github.com/KenAKAFrosty/Prns). Good-faith discussions, issues, and PRs are extremely welcome. If you're equally tired of all the yapping and just want to *solve problems*, the doors are open. --- ## Reply 65 **Zenith** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 7:31 PM I'm just going to assume you are using Claude to write these posts now. You are genuinely deluded and this scary to see. You did not write any of this code, let alone read it. LLMs are giving people some type of actual psychosis. I am absolutely tired of your gaslighting bullshit, and the same bullshit from every other techbro who gets their hands on Claude Code or Codex or Cursor or whatever. There are like 20 files for the WeaveInterface in your project that doesn't even exist yet. There is a 800 line unit test for it. How are you testing something that hasn't even been released? I could go on and on. > . That vuln gave a single person to ability to DoS virtually everyone on any network they connect to, with trivially crafted malicious packets. Mark took the email I sent to him seriously, and got it fixed extremely promptly which was very much appreciated. Yeah, 10 billion tokens later I guarantee it could find at least one real issue. Why not go fuck off and bother some other project with this. I heard Meshtastic needs a 🦀blazing 🦀 fast🦀 entirely vibecoded Rust port of their firmware and I'm sure they would love to hear about your nonsense. --- ## Reply 66 **Zenith** · Wed, Aug 12, 2026 7:48 PM Your right actually everytime I look at this it gets worse Some entirely vibecoded entropy functions https://github.com/KenAKAFrosty/Prns/blob/main/personal-hopspot/embedded/nrf52840/src/runtime/entropy.rs https://github.com/KenAKAFrosty/Prns/blob/df05c6bfc71a096f2c16af1c8a5ca1e097add26a/personal-hopspot/embedded/esp32/src/s3/mod.rs#L358 You better *pray* the AI didn't mess these up --- ## Reply 67 **Rudi Mentaire** · Thu, Aug 13, 2026 1:45 AM @aetherlab If you care about my opinion: I'm very angry myself. A good friend of mine is literally only talking about AI any more. At this moment in time I would not trust any piece of software that has primarily been created with AI. I hate what AI does to the software environment, how much additional work it causes, etc. etc. etc. But what's the use of it? You will not change it with fecal language. You will not convince anyone. You will rather invite trolls. That's at least my fear. Maybe I'm wrong - maybe not. But yes: fecal language will not repel machines, but it will repel humans. I had hoped to find a nice community here, but this thread partly looks like a scene in a grotesque Ionesco theater piece. In this moment it looks to me like it's extremely easy to sobatage discussions in this forum. Not good! If you want to change something: we need clear guidelines (I think we already have something close to that - isn't it pinned?). You could just say: "ok, listen, maybe even there are good AI written pieces of software - we don't care. Because we don't have the resources to check that and the risk is too high that this causes harm. At least large parts of the suggested project look like generated code (here are some examples), we consider it as not acceptable here. We are sorry but there are no exceptions. These are the rules of this community, or the original creaters." You can even use a boring and extremely annoying standard text and point to it. And good it is. This is even more or less what had happened. Then people started wasting their time. I did not express my opinion about the suggested software because I did not look at it. Instead I wanted to avoid that we are only getting distracted by a long discussion that leads to nothing. And yes, this is my conviction: if there are people in this forum that are undecided - maybe very, very young people - they will surely not say "ok, this guy with the red head insulting everybody - I will have a closer look at his arguments!" No. They will have the impression that "normal" human developers are terrible people and the nicest person in this thread is an AI. Terrible! And I'm very sure that there are good, valuable people that are disgusted by your language. You may call them naive etc., but your opinion doesn't matter here, nor does mine, it is a fact (just look at the votes). Because I value Reticulum and think that your language is of no use or even harmful, I decided to intervene. And no, it's not fun, I rather would have gotten some other things done. --- ## Reply 68 **Rudi Mentaire** · Thu, Aug 13, 2026 2:19 AM And, dear moderators, this is a forum for humans. If you really changed the title: this is not a good solution, IMO. If you think you need to do this, please consider finding a more appropriate way like moving the discussion to a different category. Thank you. --- ## Reply 69 **schnitzel** · Thu, Aug 13, 2026 3:02 AM All I ask is that this implementation, and all other implementations, be thoroughly vetted to be wholly compatible with the reference implementation and does not introduce vulnerabilities or cause mesh disruption (unintentional or otherwise). @KenAKAFrosty, based on previous posts it seems to be that you're very familiar with the reference implementation and that you're very enthusiastic about the Reticulum project. I hope this means that you've been able to get Claude/Gemini/whatever to produce something that works as intended and is easily maintainable by others when you are no longer able to maintain it. I'm far from being the right person to make that judgement, so I'll let others with more experience and knowledge to speak to that. Hopefully we can move on from the let's-see-how-much-more-I-can-piss-into-the-next-guy's-cheerios-than-the-last-guy-pissed-into-mine contest. As for myself, I will likely stick with the reference implementation for the foreseeable future on computers. I understand Python, I work with it often enough, it's just what is best for me. --- ## Reply 70 **Anonymous** · Thu, Aug 13, 2026 3:28 AM **Rudi Mentaire** wrote: > You could > just say: "ok, listen, maybe even there are good AI written pieces of > software - we don't care... Thanks for the reply, Rudi. We all could have. We did so many times in the Matrix channel and in here in the beginning. All of these threads start peacefully or at most cheaky. This has never stopped slop-barer's to rush in with pompous titles and flashy claims. Because no one reads neither pins, nor searches the forum history - sloppers just post and users, well they just get click-baited to try. I want to be civilized and maturely diplomatic, trust me. It doesn't feel good to act as some kind of monster in the basement. And though "fecal language" is an gross overshoot of a description for what I have written, at least in my world, I prefer to not have to and I admit it is better for everyone, that no one does. But again, Rudi - they come in waves, all the same, same talks, same bullshit, same crap. In the end what's better and more energy conserving - to waste a ton of energy and chips off your dignity to try to prove, like Zenith did so eloquently, that this is shit and no one should touch it (vibecoded entropy functions?! holy crap...), to be civilised and waste a week on trying to educate all others WHY it is a hugely bad idea AGAIN AND AGAIN (roughly every couple of months the same thing happens), or just tell the llm-saturated punk to get lost? And eventually to fuck off, because they don't listen, they don't care about anything or anybody else, don't read guidelines, do no know about others before them, that got to the same dead ends both with their projects, and their community presence, they are writers, not readers. You have just so much nerve and time and patience, especially with age. You have lived enough to have been trough so much bullshit, that wasting time on gentle methods to fend it off just doesn't cut it anymore. You just bang face-front onto some and you react directly. Because life is too short to be nice and civilized all the time. Look where this got our societies. On the verge of total collapse. --- ## Reply 71 **Rudi Mentaire** · Thu, Aug 13, 2026 4:13 AM Thanks for your elaboration. Ok, I see and understand your frustration, and where it comes from. I didn't know it has been that frustrating all the time. I must think about what you said. --- ## Reply 72 **joakim** · Thu, Aug 13, 2026 7:17 AM Well said, Rudi. I too understand the frustration, and I know this is the interwebs where flame wars are inevitable, especially around divisive topics in polarized times like these. But you can't win a flame war. It's self-defeating, the outcome is net negative. Good arguments get drowned out by personal attacks and insults, and people are more likely to side with your opponent. I just want to say that I have never doubted Ken's understanding of Reticulum or his good intentions. Even though I agree with many of the arguments made, I'm embarrassed (on behalf of the community) by how he's been treated. Whether we like it or not, vibecoding is here to stay. There are more constructive ways to deal with it than flaming. --- ## Reply 73 **burger** · Thu, Aug 13, 2026 12:07 PM >#5 the seven slops of hell --- ## Reply 74 **Rudi Mentaire** · Fri, Aug 14, 2026 2:45 AM I've now thought about this discussion and talked about it with my girlfriend. As others already mentioned, I think the net result of this kind of war has been negative for all participants, and it gave a terribly bad impression to anybody else. It would be good if this could be avoided in the future. My assumption for the following is that the original circle of reticulum authors and contributors, including the admins of this forum, agree more or less 100% about their position: that certain kinds of contributions are not what is wanted as a subject of discussion here. And: that they are also the ones that provide and maintain this forum. Then they have some kind of authority and do not necessarily need to be neutral to every opinion if it crosses the borders they defined for this forum. They have a kind of householder’s right I would say - no one is forced to come and discuss here. Everybody can go to a different forum or create a new one. This role of that team is justified because their private time and ability to work on reticulum suffers if they lose too much time and energy here. The rules must be fair (not a problem here, IMO), they must be discoverable, and: when there are actions by maintainers or aministrators, they must be communicated. In a way that makes the action visible and comprehensible for everybody. Else, since even admins don't appear without partiality in the discussion and take part, they lose their authority. A failed communication was one part of the problem in this thread. An even bigger part to me, as an outsider, seems to be that the "core circle" is very stressed and burdened, and it doesn't have a proper mean to end such discussions. They should have. They need to be able to protect themselves from this kind of stress, as much as possible. If all my assumptions are correct, and IF (and only then) all people responsible for this forum agree 100% that, for example, this contribution should not be discussed longer here, then it would be better and ok (for me) if they would finally completely stop the discussion, after giving an explanation. By some form of closing or moving the thread, some technical mean. This needs to be communicated clearly and calmly. Not everybody will be happy of course, but it would still be much better than what happened. Futher distraction of core programmers or admins should be impossible to happen afterwards. If they, for example, were able to move the whole thread to a kind of "anything else" category, the discussion could even be continued, but it should be clear that maintainers don't read it and nobody representing this forum necessarily reads it or cares about what is said. It is then a purely private exchange similar to discussions somewhere else. An alternative would be to force a complete stop of the discussion. This might seem very radical and unfair, but if I consider how stressed people are here, and that nobody wants the original team to burn out (hopefully) - this looks like an appropriate measure. Nobody can expect that everybody gets a personal feedback from maintainers if they lack the time to do that. I don't know if my suggestions are currently realizable (technically) and how, but from what I have seen and understand, something should change! There are probably other and maybe even better ways. I'm also sorry for the long message, I'm not good in writing terse. I also didn't want to give useless tips but.. hopefully it makes some sense and is a bit helpful. This experience really made me thoughtful and sad. Else I would not annoy you with such a long reply. --- ## Reply 75 **Snack003** · Fri, Aug 14, 2026 3:58 AM Anyone seen Groundhog Day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHSTc9Ydtds)? Zenith is like Phil Connors on day four when Ned Ryerson runs over all excited and Phil just smacks him in the face. Day-one-Ned was annoying but tollerable however by day four, Phil was done playing nice. Ultimately though, it was Phil, not Ned who changed and left everyone in a better place. ---