XML Prompt Plagiarism

[provencher]

Hi, I’m the creator of Repo Prompt. I see you built a nice tool here, and I have no problem with that.

What I do have a problem with is that you copied the XML prompt from Repo Prompt word-for-word. While the prompt is accessible to app users, it is not open source, and extracting it from the app to redistribute is plagiarism.

I put significant effort into designing that format and wording. I am not granting permission for others to reuse it, especially not without explicit attribution. Please remove the copied prompt from your project and replace it with your own original work.

[mnismt]

Hey @provencher thanks for pointing this out, totally forgot to credit RepoPrompt as inspiration for the XML format, sorry about that! I've been using this extension as my internal tool for a while now (it's 5 months old), just had time to release it as a public version.

Would adding a "Credits/Inspiration" section mentioning RepoPrompt work for you somewhere in the extension itself? Always want to give credit where it's due.

P/S: Also, just to be clear - I have no intention to monetize this. It's published under MIT license and will stay free/open source

[provencher]

Hi, thanks for your response. I want to be clear about why I raised this.

The XML prompt in your repo isn’t just inspired by Repo Prompt — it’s copied verbatim. The text is identical, the set of available tools is the same, the code examples are identical, and even the final notes section is word-for-word. It’s not just similar wording, it’s the entire format, down to details that make it compatible with my parser.

If I had intended the prompt to be open source, I would have released it that way. Instead, it was included in Repo Prompt for use within the app only, not for redistribution.

For that reason, attribution doesn’t resolve the issue. I need you to replace the copied prompt with your own original version, so your project can stand on its own work.

[mnismt]

@provencher got it, will replace it with my own format. Should have it updated within the next day or two

Thanks for clarifying!

[provencher]

Thank you!

[mnismt]

@provencher fixed in #2, released in v0.1.1. OPX is an original protocol and intentionally incompatible with Repo Prompt parsers.

Spec is in the PR description. Happy to discuss, otherwise we can close. Thanks.

[provencher]

Hey thanks for the quick turnaround time.

I do still feel like a lot of this is heavily based on the xml prompt format, even if it is technically different. The presence of the the <<< >>> code fences are a clear marker of the inspiration of the === in the xml format it's inspired from.

Given it's a permutation of the prompt and format it's inspired from, I do think attributing the source of the inspiration to Repo Prompt is fair, but otherwise, we can indeed close this issue.

[mnismt]

@provencher Appreciate the follow‑up, however the <<< / >>> blocks come from long‑standing diff/merge and codefence conventions which I researched and borrowed, not Repo Prompt's format actually.

While I totally respect your work and see Repo Prompt as original in its context, honestly XML prompts for file I/O isn't a novel invention. When I researched and built OPX, there are many projects that did this before:

• Apache Ant: XML build files perform file ops: copy, delete, move, mkdir, replace, replaceregexp
• MSBuild: XML project files execute tasks: Copy, Delete, Move, MakeDir, WriteLinesToFile.
• W3C XProc: XML pipeline language with load/store and document edits (XProc spec).

That said, I'm happy to add a note crediting Repo Prompt as heavy inspiration for the approach. I'll add the credit soon and close this issue. Thanks!

[provencher]

Yes that is fair enough. I appreciate you being receptive to my requests.

Best,
Eric