I Built a Python script that uses a local Ollama LLM to automatically find and add movies to Radarr.
It picks random films from your library, asks Ollama for similar suggestions based on theme and atmosphere, validates against OMDb, scores with plot embeddings, then adds the top results to Radarr automatically.
Examples:
- Whiplash → La La Land, Birdman, All That Jazz
- The Thing → In the Mouth of Madness, It Follows, The Descent
- In Bruges → Seven Psychopaths, Dead Man’s Shoes
Features:
- 100% local, no external AI API
- –auto mode for daily cron/Task Scheduler
- –genre “Horror” for themed movie nights
- Persistent blacklist, configurable quality profile
- Works on Windows, Linux, Mac
GitHub: https://github.com/nikodindon/radarr-movie-recommender
A very sane take. I do wish devs would fully disclose this on their github or other. That way, if the project is seasoned, well starred, et al, and the dev used AI as an assistant, then the user gets to decide. Given all the criteria are met, I would deploy it.
I will say that I have observed what seems like a pretty decent up tick in selfhosted apps, and I would be willing to bet a goodly amount of them have at the very least, used AI in some capacity, if not most/all code. I don’t have any solid evidence to back that up but it just seems that way to me.
Honestly, any developer that isn’t using an LLM as an assistant these days is an idiot and should be fired/shunned as such; it’s got all the rational sense of “I refuse to use compilers and I hand-write my assembly code in
vi.”(And I speak as someone who has a
.emacsfile that’s older than most programmers alive today and finally admitted I should stop usingcshas my default shell this year.)Here’s the disclosure you need: all projects you see have involved AI somewhere, whether the developers like to admit it or not. End of. The genie is out of the bottle, and it’s not going back in. Railing against it really isn’t going to change anything.
I’ve said it before, AI is here to stay. It’s not a fad. Kind of like when the internet first started to become publicly available. Lots of people deemed it a fad. It’s now a global phenom and it is the basis by which we do business on the daily, minute by minute, globally. I do think that AI needs some heavy governmental regulation. It would be great if we could all play nicely together without involving the government(s). Alas, we don’t seem to be able to do that, and so, government(s) has to step in, unfortunately. The problem with that is, imho, surveillance capitalism has worked so well that governments also want to take a peek at that data too. I have nothing to back up that conspiracy theory, it’s just a feeling I get.
Haha. I think there’s often a rough idea on what kind of programmer people are, judging by their opinion on these AI tools.
Have you tried arguing with your AI assistant for 2.5h straight about memory allocation, and why it can’t just take some example code from some documentation? And it keeps doing memory allocation wrong? Scold it over and over again to use linear algebra instead of trigonometric functions which won’t cut it? Have you tried connecting Claude Code to your oscilloscope and soldering iron to see what kind of mess its code produces?
I’m fairly sure there are reasons to use AI in software development. And there are also good reasons to do without AI, just use your brain and be done with it in one or two hours instead of wasting half a workday arguing and then still ending up doing it yourself 😅
I don’t think these programmers are idiots. There’s a lot of nuance to it. And it’s not easy at all to apply AI correctly so it ends up saving you time.
I mean, I haven’t argued with an AI for 2.5 hours straight, because I know how to use them. And I don’t expect them to think for me, because I know they’re not capable of it.
I was writing assembly language for embedded controllers where the memory is measured in bytes not megabytes, professionally, before half of you were born. I’ve developed preemptive multitasking OSes for 8 but microcontrollers, by hand, for money. These skills ceased to be particularly useful decades ago, but I didn’t sit down and sulk because optimising compilers and ludicrously cheap memory had ended my career, I moved with the times.
Practically everyone who calls themselves a “programmer” has never had the training wheels taken off since the invention of managed runtimes, you don’t now get to complain about what is or is not proper programming. The actual software engineers, who understood that the code was always just a side effect of their real job - understanding and solving problems - just have a new, and really cool, tool to learn how to use. The ones who aren’t up to it will spend 2.5hrs arguing with their AI, and then go back to coding for a hobby. And that’s fine - but if you refuse to learn AI as a tool, you no longer have a career in this industry. Any more than I would’ve if I had refused to accept that memory is basically free now and compilers can write assembly better than me.
I don’t have a definite answer to it. Could be the case I’m somehow intelligent enough to remember all the quirks of C and C++. Eat a book on my favorite microcontroller in 3 days and remember details about the peripherals and processor. But somehow I’m too stupid to figure out how AI works. I can’t rule it out. At least I’ve tried.
I still think microcontroller programming is way more fun than coding some big Node.JS application with a bazillion of dependencies.
And I sometimes wish people would write an instant messenger like we have 4MB of RAM available and not eat up 1GB with their Electron app, which then also gets flagged by the maintainers for using some components that have open vulnerabilities, twice a year.
I mean I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be allowed to complain about it.
But yeah, software development is always changing. And sometimes I wonder if things are for the better or the worse.
I’ve had a lot of bad experience with embedded stuff and trying to let AI do it for me. I mostly ended up wasting time. I always thought it must be because these LLMs are mainly trained on regular computer code, without these constraints and that’s why they always smuggle in silly mistakes. And while fixing one thing, they break a different thing. But could also be my stupidity.
I’ve had a way better time letting it do webfrontends, CSS, JavaScript… even architecture.
But I don’t think this (specifically) is one of the big issues with AI anyway. People are free to learn whatever they want. There’s a lot if niches in computer science. And diversity is a good thing.
Lol. For someone who says they expect other people to learn something, you’re a bit short in supply. I mean this would be an opportunity for someone (me) to lean something. But a down-vote won’t do it. And lessons on what not to do (discuss 2.5h, expect it to think) don’t lead anywhere either. I’d need to know what to do in my situation. Or where to find such information?!
Or was it because I said I value efficiency and for some reason you’re team bloat? I seriously don’t get it.
I think the problem is a cyclical one. Some devs are afraid to admit that they used AI to help them code because there’s so much hatred towards using AI to code. But the hatred only grows because some devs are not disclosing that they’ve had help from AI to code and it seems like they’re hiding something which then builds distrust. And of course, that’s not helped by the influx of slop too where an AI has been used and the code has not been reviewed and understood before its released.
I don’t mind more foss projects, even if they’re vibe coded, but please PLEASE understand your code IN FULL before releasing it, if at least so you can help troubleshoot the bugs people experience when they happen!
I would say there is a lot of truth to that statement. The backlash is immediate and punishing. I’ve said before, I think there are a lot of young devs who would like to contribute to the opensource/selfhosting community, but lack the experience.
We also have issues with young people in the industry. As some junior developer stuff is now done by AI, we’re lacking more and more positions to start in, and learn the ropes. And you can’t start out as a senior, either. So that got more complicated as well.
Experience is something you never have until after you need it.
Yeah. Maybe it’s time to adopt some new rule in the selfhosted community. Mandating disclosure. Because we got several AI coded projects in the last few days or weeks.
I just want some say in what I install on my computer. And not be fooled by someone into using their software.
I mean I know why people deliberately hide it, and say “I built …” when they didn’t. Because otherwise there’s an immediate shitstorm coming in. But deceiving people about the nature of the projects isn’t a proper solution either. And it doesn’t align well with the traditional core values of Free Software. I think a lot of value is lost if honesty (and transparency) isn’t held up anymore within our community.
Tho I chafe against rules and regulations, I realize they are necessary.
Me too. It’s why I try to carefully pick seasoned projects, and I don’t jump on the bandwagon just because it’s a new twist to an old solution. I selfishly want others to be my beta testers. LOL Hey, I admit it. Also, I am truly thankful that there exists in the community, those who can and do look at the code and understand the issues involved. I do not possess those skills. I know a limited amount of code and use it for me locally. I would never dare publish it tho. I’m too afraid of what the ramifications would be should someone use my code and the wheels fall off their server. I would feel very responsible. It’s the reason I do not even publish my notes to a wiki of some sort.
Warning, anecdote:
I was unexpectedly stuck in Asia for the last month (because of the impact of the war), turning an in-person dev conference I was organising into an “in-person except for me” one at a few days notice.
I needed a simple countdown timer/agenda display I could mix into the video with OBS; a simple requirement, so I tried a few from the standard package repos (
apt, snap store, that kind of thing.)None of them worked the way I wanted or at all - one of them written in Python installed about 100 goddamned dependencies (because, Python,) and then crashed because, well, Python.
So I gave up and asked my local hosted LLM model to write it for me in Rust. In less than 10 minutes I had exactly what I wanted, in a few hundred lines of Rust. And yeah, I did tidy it up and publish it to the snap store as well, because it’s neat and it might help someone else.
Which is more secure? The couple of hundred lines of Rust written by my LLM, or the Python or node.js app that the developer pinky-promises was written entirely by human hand, and which downloads half the Internet as dependencies that I absolutely am not going to spend time auditing just to display a goddamned countdown clock in a terminal window?
The solution to managing untrusted code isn’t asking developers for self-declared purity test results. It’s sandboxing, containers, static analysis… All the stuff that you are doing already with all the code/apps you download if you’re actually concerned. You are doing those things, right?
Good comment. The main issue is this: Back in the day I could have a quick look at the code and tell within a minute whether something was coded by a 12 year old or by some experienced programmer. Whether someone put in so much effort, I could be pretty sure they’re gonna maintain the project. Put in some love because it solves some use-case in their life and it’s going to do the same for me. Assess their skill-level in languages I’m fluent in.
These days not so much. All code quality looks pretty much the same. Could be utter garbage. Could be good software, could be maintained. Could be anything, Claude always makes it look good on a first glance. There’s also new ulterior motives why software exists. And it takes me a good amount of time and detective work to find out. And I often can’t rely on other people either, because they’re either enraged or bots and the entire arguments are full of falsehoods.
As a programmer and avid Linux user, I rely a lot on other people’s software. And the Free Software community indeed used to be super reliable. I could take libraries for my software projects. Could install everything from the Debian repo and I never had any issues. It’s mostly rock solid. There were never any nefarious things going on.
And now we added deceit to the mix. Try to keep the true nature of projects a secret. And i think that’s super unhealthy. I had a lot of trust in my supply chain. And now I’m gonna need to put in a lot of effort to keep it that way. And not fall prey to some shiny new thing which might be full of bugs and annoyances and security vulnerabilities, and gone by tomorrow once someone stops their OpenClaw… Yet the project looks like some reliable software.
And I don’t share the opinion on sandboxing. Linux doesn’t have sandboxing (on the Desktop). That’s a MacOS thing (and Android and iOS). All we have is Flatpak. But you’re forcing me to install 10GB of runtimes. Pass on the distro maintainers who always had a second pair of eyes on what software does, if it had tracking or weird things in it, whether it had security vulnerabilities in the supply chain. Maintainers who also provided a coherent desktop experience to me. And now I’m gonna pull software from random people/upstreams on the internet, and trust them? Really? Isn’t that just worse in any aspect?
And wasn’t there some line in devops? Why is it now every operators job to do static analysis on the millions of moving parts on their servers… Isn’t that a development job?
And I don’t think Flatpak’s permission system is even fine-granular enough. Plus how does it even help in many cases? If I want to use a password manager, it obviously needs access to my passwords. I can’t sandbox that away. So if the developers decide to steal them, there’s no sandboxing stopping them in any way. Same for all the files on my Nextcloud. So I don’t see how sandboxing is gonna help with any of that.
I just don’t think it’s a good argument. I mean if you have a solution on how sandboxing helps with these things, feel free to teach me. I don’t see a way around trust and honesty as the basic building blocks. And then sandboxing/containerization etc on top to help with some specific (limited) attack vectors.
I mean, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying we need to ban AI in software development. I’m also not saying 12 year olds aren’t allowed to code. I did. And some kids do great things. That in itself isn’t any issue.