Sure - and people are able to audit what the software is doing and call it out if it’s operating in a way that’s unintended or inappropriate, just as has happened here.

Edit:

I’ll add this point as people always seem to want to raise the spectre of YC or the AI platforms stealing people’s code or ideas via these sorts of tools.

The value of any code or ideas is immaterial compared to the value of identifying talented people who can then be offered opportunities such as attending Startup School, being funded by YC, getting jobs at YC-funded companies or YC itself.

It’s one of pg’s oldest dictums, that ideas alone are worthless, and only working products and the people that build them are worth anything. Nobody at YC thinks any differently about that these days.

>>Sure - and people are able to audit what the software is doing and call it out if it’s operating in a way that’s unintended or inappropriate, just as has happened here

1. Yes you can audit client side and network interface, but not server side.

2. does 'curl $URL | sh' invite users to audit? Or to trust blindly? It's the equivalent of presenting a contract with 'sign here' stickers and pushing you to sign it quickly like it's nothing. Does not signal trustworthiness.

>I’ll add this point as people always seem to want to raise the spectre of YC or the AI platforms stealing people’s code or ideas via these sorts of tools.

>The value of any code or ideas is immaterial compared to the value of identifying talented people who can then be offered opportunities such as attending Startup School, being funded by YC, getting jobs at YC-funded companies or YC itself.

>It’s one of pg’s oldest dictums, that ideas alone are worthless, and only working products and the people that build them are worth anything. Nobody at YC thinks any differently about that these days.

I do agree and share this point, ideas are worthless. But this doesn't deal with ideas, it deals with code, which as a software startup I don't feel the need to convince you of its value and the risks of leaking it. If you think your code is worthless, close your startup.

By many definitions, prompts are source code, and what we used to call source code is now target code. So this indeed does leak your source code. It's not just an IP blunder to leak your source code this carelessly, but it's a security blunder to do so. "But Kerchoff's principle.." no, Kerchoff's principle is that you should design your system as if source code were public, not that leaking source code has no negative security effect.

Also, is it possible that YC is taking advantage of the 'your ideas are worthless' dictum? Just share your ideas with YC, they are too big to care about your stupid idea. But they are gathering intel on over hundred of thousands of startups, and the ratio of applicants to fundings is continuously going down.

And sharing your idea with a single potential investor, isn't the same thing as submitting your idea (and implementation details), to a system built by people who don't give a shit about internals or security, and that use third party tools and services from different countries to process your data in ways that they don't give a fuck either.

What guarantee do you have that by using YC's vibecode data gathering tool, your data won't end up in a training set that will make it easier for a competitor with the same idea as you to find your solution?

A decade ago maybe your idea was worthless and joining YC was a contrarian bet. Nowadays, this data is clearly worth something, and applying to YC is as mainstream as applying for a job, and both of these mainstream 'apply for a 0.1% chance at the privilege of working with us' tend to grow completely asymmetric and exploit the underdog as much as they allow themselves to be exploited.