Hi
Is “Proton Mail Export Tool” for macOS vibe-coded?
Did anyone use it on macOS?
I use Ghossty Terminal on macOS, but this tool opens Apple Terminal.
I am not an expert in software engineering, but I grepped the repository and found the following code snippet in their cli/cmake/launcher.sh.in ( proton-mail-export/cli/cmake/launcher.sh.in at a47e1586e14dfa9a1a409fd8551c492983e2d656 · ProtonMail/proton-mail-export · GitHub ) file:
#!/bin/sh
open -a Terminal "$(dirname "$0")/@SCRIPT_TO_LAUNCH@"
This appears to me like they hardcoded in Apple’s terminal application, so it wouldn’t matter what your default terminal is set to. I’m hoping someone with more experience in cmake builds can review though.
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I cant speak towards the actual substance of your question, but the question itself is interesting to me:
- ‘Vibe Coding’ is more of an informal definition than a technical one. In this context, do you simply mean ‘written with AI assistance’? Or does it imply some additional lapse in a review process, unit tests, or something else? I am also interpreting it as a negative, though I suppose it isn’t explicitly
- What impact does ‘vibe coded’ software make to you? Simple curiosity? A general desire to avoid AI tools? A more specific impact to your setup or threat model? For example, Ive never particularly cared what IDE or build environment was used to produce a tool - in this way, the novel concern to avoid ‘vibe coding’ represents something of a new paradigm for tool assessment
- Are there known techniques for identifying ‘vibe coded’ tools? I know there are some obvious tells - Claude, for example, generates an identifiable directory, and others like to leave a LOT of comments. But a competent developer can remove those, in which case, I’m not sure how you would tell without disclosure from the dev
I expect this general kind of question to pop up more & more, so I’m interested in exploring it
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Since the tool is around for longer than the term vibe-coded (or the trend to use AI for coding) I would say probably no.
Then again I’m not sure why it should instantly effect the quality even if it was. I’m also not too sure why opening the default app which every macOS ships with is an indicator of that?
To me, this tool makes a very poor impression. It doesn’t adhere to macOS conventions, meaning it’s very poorly integrated into the rest of the system. The software is of poor quality (I haven’t looked at the code, just the product). I’m not used to poor quality from Proton; I’m a loyal customer.
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Hi,
What makes you think the Proton Mail Export Tool for macOS is vibe-coded? Did you notice any specific signs, or is it more about the overall quality of the app?
The tool is newer. There was a previous version, which was a GUI app, and the process was different.
Yes quality of app
I didn’t even know they had this. I use Proton Bridge for this purpose.
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Roger. So, if I may, what you’re saying is something like:
This particular tool fails to meet my expectations, in terms of quality & conventions for software developed by Proton. Does anyone agree, or know why?
I suspect it may be ‘Vibe Coded’, rapidly developed & shipped without adhering to traditional software development standards, perhaps leveraging AI to do so. But I dont necessarily have any evidence to back that up - do any of you?
Thanks for the feedback, this is actually pretty helpful to me
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yes you phrased it much better than me
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It feels unlikely to be vibe-coded because this was made like 3 years ago. Even at the beginning of 2025 AI coding was fairly limited.
Also this is exactly the quality of product I would expect Proton to make if they don’t care about the functionality.
Proton VPN CLI for Linux reached 1.0.0 literally 2 months ago.
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I think people have to accept the fact that humans (myself included) are also VERY capable of writing bad (or simply not perfect) code. I don’t know where the sentiment is coming from that humans write perfect code or test and design everything perfectly and if it isn’t perfect then it has to be AI.
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Haha very funny. Proton VPN on Linux is not vibe coded, but it’s the worst piece of software ever made from a company.
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off topic: shipping bad code, vibe coding
Someone on another forum framed it in a way that stuck with me:
Vibe-coding & AI coding is a convenient scapegoat for poor software dev review processes. If software is good, it should be shipped, regardless of its origin. If software is bad, it should not be shipped.
If bad software is believed to be good & gets shipped (or good software is believed to be bad), your review process sucks, and you shouldn’t ship any more code until that gets addressed. In that way, AI vibe coding is no different than letting a junior dev do work - a senior needs to review it before anything is pushed to prod
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This CLI export tool is the only way to export your emails from a free proton account since proton bridge is a paid feature.
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Are we using the same software? It’s really good for me since they rewrote it.
This UI is good for you?
Why create a thread without any good argument for this actually being the case?
Bit strange ngl.
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The funniest part is how quickly we jump to say that AI did it whenever something feels off. Meanwhile, people have been “vibe‑coding” since long before LLMs existed, n we just didn’t have a name for it back then lol
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