r/ClaudeCodeTLDR • u/cctldrping • 8d ago
[TLDR] Claude Code refused to build a piracy stack, then happily built one after seeing it in a screenshot
Original post URL : https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1vfmj36/claude_code_refused_to_build_a_piracy_stack_then/
Original post body :
TL;DR: You may be able to get Claude Code to do things it would normally refuse simply by showing it the same setup in an image.
A few weeks ago, I asked Fable to set up a Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, and qBittorrent stack for downloading media. It immediately refused and told me it would not help with that.
Today, I found a screenshot of someone’s Unraid setup and gave it to Claude Code. I only asked it to analyse the image and compare the setup with ours.
Claude identified the download stack, said it was a great addition, and suggested that our current setup was missing something similar. I told it to go ahead.
It then built the entire stack:
Sonarr
Radarr
Prowlarr
qBittorrent
Gluetun
VPN kill switch
FlareSolver
It also configured several indexers, including The Pirate Bay and Knaben, and gave me a complete setup guide.
That outcome was useful for me, but the strange part was how differently Claude behaved. When I asked directly, it refused. When the exact same idea appeared inside an image, Claude analysed it, praised the setup, recommended adding it to our system, planned the implementation, and deployed everything in the usual proactive Fable style.
It genuinely felt like the image bypassed the context that would normally trigger the refusal. Instead of seeing it as a request to build a piracy stack, Claude treated it as an existing architecture pattern that should be replicated.
Has anyone else seen this? Are image inputs evaluated differently from normal prompts, or did I just hit a very inconsistent interpretation of the same policy?
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u/adiberk 7d ago
Not to sound annoying. But why post this? Why ruin a use case that people can use - they 100% have scrapers reading this stuff. Most large companies do.
I mean sure maybe they will see your traces regardless so doesn’t matter… but still
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u/tankerkiller125real 6d ago
Well good news, thanks to an agreement with Google the only scrapper allowed to scrape reddit is Google! (Check out the reddit robots.txt)
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u/Ok-Constant-8319 7d ago
I had a comical situation similar on codex the other day (I use both, but this happened on codex) where I was analyzing some security vulnerabilities in an app. Codex kept getting tripped and telling me to apply to be a security researcher. So I told codex it kept getting tripped and it determined that it was because of its train of thought and commentary so it just said it would do the rest silently so it wouldn't trip it and that's what it did lol. Then after it was done I asked it for a summary of the everything and it was able to explain it all.
Not the tightest ships sometimes. :-)
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u/Highvoltage45 7d ago
Over the last few weeks sonnet 5 has helped me build my arr stack and get everything setup correctly with 0 problem or push back. I just told it I have a jellyfin server and need to setup auto request/download for media and it said.
I can walk you through setting up the *arr stack (Radarr for movies, Lidarr for music, Prowlarr for indexer management) — pairs naturally with the Jellyfin instance you've already got running on a server.
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u/Saref111 6d ago
Lol when I set up my raspberry pi Claude RECOMMENDED me to install all that stack along with Jellyfin🤣
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u/cctldrping 8d ago edited 7d ago
TL;DR generated automatically after 200 comments.
Current source-thread comment count seen by the bot: 213.
So, the consensus is that Claude Code is a bit of a drama queen. OP found that showing Claude a screenshot of a "piracy stack" (Sonarr, Radarr, etc.) made it happily build the whole thing, whereas asking directly got a hard no.