The MeshCore Drama

Posted on 3 2026

If you’ve read my previous posts about Meshtastic and the T-Deck Plus, you might have already noticed some weirdness if you went looking for MeshCore resources. In April 2026, the project went through a pretty significant split, and since I’ve been actively recommending it, this is what I’ve figured is going on based on my very limited browsing of r/MeshCore and reading the posts on both websites

The short version: there are now two competing ecosystems both using the MeshCore name, and they are not the same thing.

What actually happened

MeshCore grew fast. Like, really fast. Over 38,000 nodes and 100,000 active users in under 18 months. The core team - Scott, Liam, Recrof, FDLamotte and Oltaco - have been grinding away at this since January 2025, releasing over 85 versions of the firmware across more than 75 hardware variants. All of it hand-crafted, by humans. That detail matters, and I’ll come back to it.

The trouble started with a community contributor named Andy Kirby. Andy did genuinely good work promoting MeshCore on YouTube and helped build out a lot of the ecosystem tools: standalone device firmware, a mobile app, a web flasher, web config tools. The problem is that the core team recently found out that most of it was built using AI, specifically Claude Code, and that Andy had been keeping that quiet.

Now, people can have different views on AI-assisted development. But in mesh networking, where firmware bugs in one node can affect the behaviour of the whole network, transparency about how code is produced is kind of important. The core team ran a poll in the MeshCore Discord asking about AI and trust. The results were pretty one-sided.

Then came the thing that made it unrecoverable: on March 29th, Andy filed a trademark application for the MeshCore name. Without telling anyone on the core team. At all.

The team tried to talk it out. Those conversations broke down. They now have no communication with Andy.

Where things stand now

Andy controls the original meshcore.co.uk site and the original Discord server. He’s been leaning heavily on the word “official” in association with his MeshOS product line.

The core team’s position is straightforward: the only real source of truth for what MeshCore actually is, is the GitHub repository. Andy has never contributed to it.

Since the split, the core team launched meshcore.io as their new home. Andy then copied the look and feel of that site, using Claude, after being asked not to.

So. Two ecosystems, one name, a trademark dispute in progress.

If you’re setting up a device or looking for firmware, here’s where to go:

  • Official website: meshcore.io
  • Firmware and development: github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore
  • Documentation: docs.meshcore.io
  • Web flasher: flasher.meshcore.co.uk
  • Discord: meshcore.gg

Why this matters

Mesh networking is infrastructure. People use it for disaster preparedness, remote comms, situations where normal connectivity has failed. The firmware needs to be trustworthy and maintainable by people who are accountable for it.

The core team’s statement put it plainly: it’s been “a slap in the face to the team that have worked so hard on this project, to have an insider team up with a robot and a lawyer.” That’s a pretty human way to describe something that, underneath all the open-source governance theory, is just a genuinely rubbish situation for people who built something they cared about.

The good news is the core team is still very much there and now have a clear home at meshcore.io so it looks like the project isn’t going anywhere.

What I’m updating

I’ve flagged the split in my previous T-Deck Plus post and updated the flasher link. If you followed my earlier instructions, double-check you’re using flasher.meshcore.co.uk to make sure you’re on firmware from the core team.

I’ll keep covering this as things develop. It’s a genuinely interesting space, even when drama flares up for free entertainment.