HortusFox: Development roadmap, stance on AI and community appreciation

Since spring has entered the door, I want to take the opportunity to tell a bit about the development roadmap, outline my stance on AI, and spread some community appreciation.

What are the plans for the future?

HortusFox is in a state where I consider it likely feature-complete. At least unless something very cool pops into my mind and I want to integrate it. Does that mean development stops now? Far from it! It only means that I will slow development down a bit. As you can see from the issue tracker, there isn't much to do currently (in comparision), so I really don't want to rush and implement everything, only for the project to turn silent afterwards. To me it's very important, that all users can be sure that HortusFox is constantly and steadily updated. That's why I'll stretch development to keep it in line with that. My project is intended to be long lasting. Naturally, it will be adapted to possible updates of its dependencies as well. I'm yearning for a long-term project, hence I'll ensure its sustainability for the long future.

What is my stance on AI?

I say this with pride: HortusFox enforces a zero tolerance against vibe coding and AI slop. It's even to the point that I'm currently considering to deny pull requests on a general basis as I don't know who you can trust these days. Yes, there are ways to tell what code is AI generated, but I'm more afraid of the code that you can't detect at first, then only for it to be turned out as vibe coded. Thanks to the selfhost newsletter, I'm aware of all the disappointments certain apps have caused to the community when it was revealed that they were slop. HortusFox however is a project that must respect the principles of FOSS and self-hosting, hence I need to find a way to deal with the current situation of AI slop (HortusFox was also targeted for an unsolicited "security audit" of a bot which created over 160 slop posts across over 140 projects and is not yet banned 😡). I'll keep you updated!

What have you done so far in 2026?

As you can see from the commit history, I've pushed some updates - and as already said - this will continue for the long term. HortusFox is my most important project and I will ensure it's longevity! Meanwhile, I've also tried to offer paid hosting, offering a price as cheap as possible, however I paused it after some time as I was discouraged with certain things. I'm not sure if I want to continue my hosting offerings, but on the other hand it would be nice if it would help me a bit financially wise. This hosting service would NEVER affect HortusFox in any way, it would rather be a possibility to let non-tech people use the app. But since hosting does come with expenses, I'd need to charge a small amount. I also created new HortusFox themes that are animated! I really encourage you to try out the frisky and prehistoricals theme. The former has animated banners, birds and flowers, where the latter has animated banners with dinosaurs.

Community appreciation

I can't say this often enough: I'm really, really happy for everyone supporting the project! Thanks for all the happy users, feedback, constructive criticism, GitHub stars, etc! The project wouldn't be where it is now without you! Thanks to my girlfriend who came up with the idea in the first place! I love you all. Keep your heads up. Let's fight AI where possible! Own your data by self-hosting! Have a wonderful weekend. 💚💚

➡️View repository on GitHub https://github.com/danielbrendel/hortusfox-web 🌐Visit the HortusFox Homepage https://www.hortusfox.com (Note: This is an altered version of a Reddit post)