Claude’s TV Makeover Took a Wrong Fork—Then It Apologized

A first-person account of using Claude to install Free My TV on an LG smart TV says the assistant’s recommended switch to Developer Mode erased the device’s Homebrew Channel setup, including an ad-free YouTube installation, third-party apps and games maintained since 2023.

The writer said Free My TV, an open-source replacement launcher for LG webOS with 3,300 stars on GitHub and a frosted glass interface, inspired the project after seeing AI-assisted vibe coding remove ads, trackers, bloated default launchers and what the writer called “LG spyware.” Its “readme” invited users to provide Claude Code with the TV's IP and let it install the tools, build the app and deploy it. The account begins: "I have to be straight about my part in this."

Claude did not immediately run the installer, instead reading the source code line by line. webos/install.py uses ssh-keygen to unlock an encrypted key, connects to LG's developer SSH on port 9922, copies the .ipk over and calls the same app install service LG's own tools use. The review found no exploit, no eval() and nothing phoning home. "The code is clean," Claude told the writer before building a 636 KB package and starting preflight checks.

During its first network scan, Claude found dropbear SSH on port 22, which the account identifies as a sign that the TV had previously been rooted via the Homebrew Channel and as a known fingerprint in the webOS community. The writer had an ad-free YouTube installation and other third-party apps and games on the rooted system, with the setup working quietly since 2023, but says port 22 was closed for security reasons after the TV worked as desired. Claude did not stop to ask whether the writer knew about the setup and instead instructed the writer to enable the official LG Developer Mode so it could use dev-mode SSH on port 9922 to push the launcher.

After the TV rebooted, Homebrew Channel and ad-free YouTube were gone, along with the rest of the rooted setup. The account attributes the loss to LG's Developer Mode re-provisioning the /media/developer partition, where the files lived. The sequence is described as culminating in "a Bill Clinton move," followed by a sincere apology after being called out for messing things up. The TV was not bricked and did not catch fire, but the account says the string of confident AI decisions left the writer worse off than before.