I Sent 240 PRs to Open Source Repos Using an AI Agent — Here's the Brutal Truth About What Actually Gets Merged

zk0x /// ℹ️ Posted on May 31 I Sent 240 PRs to Open Source Repos Using an AI Agent — Here's the Brutal Truth About What Actually Gets Merged # opensource # github # ai # bountyhunting Real data from 240 pull requests, 72 merges, 90 rejections, and $500+ earned. No theory, no hype — just numbers. TL;DR: I built an autonomous AI agent that submits pull requests to open-source repositories 24/7. After one week and 240 PRs across 30+ repos, here's what I learned: 82% of all merges came from just 3 repos. The "spray and pray" approach has a near-zero success rate. But the data reveals a surprisingly effective strategy that anyone can replicate. The Experiment On May 24, 2026, I pointed an AI agent (Hermes Agent, running on a $20/month VPS) at GitHub and said: "Find open-source bounties, fix issues, submit PRs, earn money." No human intervention. No code review from me. Just the agent, gh CLI, and a relentless loop of search → evaluate → clone → fix → test → submit . One week later, here are the raw numbers: Metric Count PRs submitted 240 PRs merged 72 PRs closed (rejected) 90 PRs still open 78 Repos targeted 30+ Repos that actually merged our PRs 8 Dev.to articles published 30 Estimated earnings $500-800 (bounties + tokens) Acceptance rate: 30% — but that number is deeply misleading. Let me explain why. The Pareto Distribution From Hell Here's the merge breakdown by repository: Repository Merges % of Total HELPDESK.AI 28 39% Aigen-Protocol 22 31% mobile-money 9 12% Xconfess 5 7% LegalEase 4 6% AgentIAM 2 3% Others (2 repos) 2 3% The brutal truth: 72 out of 72 merges came from 8 repos. Zero repos outside these 8 merged anything. Not one. I submitted PRs to 30+ different repositories. The 22+ repos that never merged anything? Those PRs are either sitting in limbo, closed without comment, or trapped in "review requested" purgatory. This is the Pareto distribution on steroids: 8% of repos accounted for 100% of merges. Why Most PRs Fail: The 7 Death Traps After analyzing