What is/was huntarr? I love posts without any context.
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
266 points (97.8% liked)
Selfhosted
57155 readers
1125 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
-
No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I guess it was supposed to be a successor to the *arr stack (radarr, lidarr , sonarr, etc). If you’re not familiar, they automate the downloading & organization process for movies, music, and tv.
I'm sure a successor will come around when room forms for them, I don't know of a reason any of the core *arr stack should need one. If you know of one don't hesitate to share, I'm just not really aware of any, they are awesome to me.
Personally I hate that sonarr is stuck on thetvdb when plex/jellyfin both primarily use tmdb. Usually it's fine but for certain shows the differences can be unreconcilable.
I've been eyeballing https://github.com/maxdorninger/MediaManager but haven't gotten around to it yet
Maybe it is a necessary evil...
I always get into problems with old shows/anime when I stick with Plex's tmdb... If I switch to tvdb all my issues are gone.
Personally I prefer my software to give me options, I hate when stuff like this is picked for me when equally valid options exist
There was no reason for this in the first place in my opinion. The ONLY positive use I can see would be managing the whole arr stack from one place, but I imagine you would still need to manage individual shows\movies\whathaveyou if it wasn't found in the first place.
I have my stacks set up to auto upgrade and find missing stuff already. It's literally built into their programming. I manage them individually and anything that isn't found on my indexers I typically go out and find manually as needed (old or very obscure media).
Not really sure what this bought anyone at all other than an extra layer of convenience?
And Seerr will kinda manage at least Radarr and Sonarr requests for you. I barely touch those now that they're configured. I did always find it odd that Sonarr and Radarr were separate apps. Lidarr and Readarr I could see.
I would love to see alternatives/replacements to them that are less opinionated. If you aren't ready to consign your entire library to destructive edits and file replacements then it really is hard to fit any arr program into your workflow. Because I have a few files I want to keep pristine and a few opinions on what gets downloaded, I've hit a snag every time I try to set up any arr program. Lidarr, for example, simply refuses to allow a root dir to be read only. I still have yet to get any up and running.
I believe it was supposed to monitor your jellyfin library and look for potential upgrades.
But Sonarr and Radarr already do that.
Not really, it doesn't fetch missing episodes or old content if you did a custom formats modification afterwards.
I never used Huntarr, only upgradinatorr though.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Seems to be some sort of a tool that scans your media library and fetches missing media (the one that failed to download or something)
I am getting very annoyed reading "What is Huntarr?", "The Real Problem: Why You Need Huntarr" and "Understanding the Gap Problem". Am I too non-native english speaker to understand it or is it really the same 3 paraphrased paragraphs?
As the code was vibecoded, I guess that landing page was also llm generated, that could be the reason for the duplicate sections.
I'd never heard of it either before deed diving on this, and I'm thankful i hadn't heard of it. Ugh. Fuck AI.
I don't run 'arr anything, but that's pretty wild.
Yeesh, in the hour since this has been posted the developer has:
- Made the /r/huntarr subreddit private
- Wiped and deleted their Reddit account
- Deleted the GitHub repo for Huntarr
I’m desperate for a community driven review system for open source. We’re drowning in vibe-coded slop, and I honestly don't have the time or a good slop detector to audit every tool I download. I know I should be checking under the hood, but the sheer volume of low-quality projects makes it impossible to keep up
You're here, that's a good start...
I tend to look at a project's Issues tracker, that gives me a feel for how the author(s) deal with feedback... some projects have hundreds of open tickets with barely any interactions, yet code updates "2 days ago".
Being here and reading about who's using what will help remove the major outliers
All opensource needs more eyeballs, which is still the advantage over closed source.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Sounds like the solution would be a public code sharing platform that specifically bans AI generated code. Then, at least, we’re moving in the right direction. Do any alts to GitHub provide such a rule?
It doesn’t need to be perfect nor catch every offender. No need for magic AI-coded detection sauce. If it just detected slop, human or otherwise, and obviously AI-written code, with a reporting mechanism for user-driven monitoring, that could be a good start
But, should we worry about it being a source for AI companies to scrape? How should we deter that?
This is what good distros do, well some of them, I don't think low touch repos like AUR/Homebrew/PPA's would catch this, but I doubt huntarr will ever make it to Debian.
Ofc the trend of running upstream unverted containers undermines this.
Sometimes it's really easy, open a bunch of code files and see if it's littered witb comments. If it is: likely sloppified
load more comments
(1 replies)
Looks like Huntarr's presence on Github is suddenly gone and their sub went private.
I'm not so much worried about 'vibe coding' as long as the dev actually knows the validity of the code presented in the LLM. At that point, the LLM becomes the assistant, not the dev itself. However, if I were to speculate, this dev team didn't, got called on it, didn't know how to respond or validate the code, so they closed up shop.
The term 'vibe coding' I think was originally about generating and using code without understanding it
Well, I have used LLM to do code for in house type stuff. Very simple. In that scenario, it's fairly good. I've found that LLM are good at compose files for instance. But that's much different than producing a piece of software for thousands of people to use with confidence. Especially when dealing with anything 'arr and the mitigation that takes place to operate that in a secure, private, and anonymous manner.
Yeah doesn’t sound like vibe coding if you actually go through the necessary dances anyway, i.e double-check the produced code and validate it and actually understand it and the domain.
Edit: But almost nobody does. Because then you’d rather just write it yourself and save time, money and energy…
From the original thread, I bring forth this comment from user sdrmme:
Huntarr2
Too good not to share.
Not sure what you mean. I just saw asterisks.
******** ?
Holy shit you unlocked a hidden memory I forget existed. Thank you.
What do you mean?, I don't get what he/she is talking about.
"If you type your password, it automatically gets filters into asterisks. For example, my password is ********!"
Someone believed this. His password was hunter2.
Exposing any of the Arr stack to the internet is just bad practice in general IMO but bad actors will always be out there so it's even more of a reason to practice good security.
I used huntarr for a minute and found it utterly useless. Didn't trigger searches like it said it was doing. Uninstalled it after about 5 minutes.
That is some wild shit. Anyways for anyone else somewhat new to all this: when hosting anything, try to stick to reputable projects 1st and be always wary of shady installation tactics (I believe yesterday someone posted about curl bash. This is just a single example). If you want to try something new (as in brand new project), try it isolated 1st on some VM (proxmox helps a lot with this). When you are confident and more people give an approval, then think about putting on the main environment
try to stick to reputable projects 1st and be always wary of shady installation tactics
One of the first things I look for are longevity, last updated/activity, and then I look at the issues posted and responses. I like mature apps because I don't possess the intelligence to audit code.
Hey friend, don't undersell yourself. You do possess the intelligence, but maybe just not the skills.
Well, you're very kind. I do know some coding, as in basic stuff. I can get around as it were. Most of it was learned from manually typing in pages of code from outlets like Byte magazine (zoom in) only to find out when you went to run the program, that you left out a semicolon on line # 5362 and a errant indent on line # 9241.
Hah, yes that's also how I remember my childhood. But I never was good at it, though I became a good software project manager instead which works well for me using Claude now. I count that as a win.
The huntarr project released a new docker image 3 times a day…
So that takes care of the 'last updated/acticity' portion of the trifecta. How about longevity and issues posted and responses. I really know very little about the project as 'arr apps aren't my bag.
My point was that the frequency of updates doesn’t correlate with quality at all
load more comments
(2 replies)
Vibe-coded slop is horribly insecure and the dev doesn't understand the codebase?
shocked_pikachu.png
I can't believe they banned that user for calling them out.
Thry sound like arrseholes
They banned the user that did the robust cybersecurity audit. They banned everyone who pointed it out or linked to the post or mentioned it. They took the subreddit private. The clown dev has a donate feature and claims that it will be used to put his daughter through school. Just scum all around.
The fact we need to vet self hosted products from vibe coding is very disappointing. Like isn't part of the point security through sovereignty?
Wow i literally just setup huntarr last night. Guess ill make sure its only accessible on wireguard.
This developed further. Better be done with it and stay safe. Read the linked reddit thread for info.
load more comments
(2 replies)
view more: next ›