Image: u/Nefzaoui on Reddit · Mister Download Manager’s IDM-style main window
Mister Download Manager rebuilds IDM as open-source Rust
The maker used Claude Code over ten days to build a GPL download manager for Windows and Linux modelled on Internet Download Manager, with Mac builds still experimental.
Credits
Earliest dated source:
The full story
Mister Download Manager is a free, open-source (GPL-3.0) download manager written in Rust for Windows and Linux, with experimental Mac builds. It copies the familiar layout of Internet Download Manager and adds multi-connection downloads, a browser extension, video and torrent downloads, debrid services, themes and control from a phone.
The maker started it with Claude Code ten days before version 0.5, which they call the first complete release. Claude Code with Opus wrote most of the code: the download engine, every window, the extension, the installers and the website. The maker kept it clean-room: the project rules Claude reads forbid any IDM code, artwork or text, and behaviour is learned only from public documentation and from using a licensed copy.
Every change has to be shown working against the real app, on Windows, Linux VMs running GNOME, KDE, Xfce and Cinnamon, and in Chrome, Firefox and Waterfox. The maker says this caught a regression that the unit tests missed, hours before a release.
How it was done
Tools
Themes
Loading themes…
Sources
From a short post by the maker, so the details are as they tell them.
- Reddit: I used Claude Code to rebuild IDM as a free, open-source download manager, the ArtCraft way. Mister Reddit poster: NefzaouiPosted
The maker's post in r/ClaudeAI on the clean-room rules and how releases are verified.
- Reddit: I rebuilt IDM as a free, open-source download manager, the ArtCraft way. Mister Download MReddit poster: NefzaouiPosted