Developer redirects Dark Hours domain after AI-built app resembled an existing project

Developer Terry Godier has published an apology and shut down Dark Hours, a website utility he launched last week that showed what could be seen in the night sky, after discovering that the AI-built project closely resembled an existing open-source app — including its name. The other project, DarkHours.app, was pointed out to him by its own developer.

What happened

The developer of DarkHours.app replied to Godier's comment on Bluesky to show how similar the two projects were, the name included, and linked to the thread. Godier said he would differentiate the feature set, change his project's name and write a blog post to give the existing project visibility. About an hour later, once it became clear that the web app he had launched using Claude was strikingly similar to the open-source project — even reproducing a bug the other developer had since fixed — he concluded that there was nothing to do but redirect the domain directly to him and drop plans for an iOS version.

The apology

Godier gave credit to the other developer, calling his work a wonderful open-source app, and urged anyone who liked the features of what he had launched to use the original instead. He apologized for what he described as his irresponsible use of AI, saying that while he had genuinely never seen DarkHours.app before, he was careless in relying on AI to generate the project without checking whether it closely resembled existing work. "I am responsible for what I published," he wrote.

What changes going forward

Going forward, Godier says he will not use AI in this way to build more web projects, and that he does not use it to anything close to this extent in iOS software — he does ask it questions and debug issues, but does not create apps with Claude for iOS.