disclaimer

This is based on my own experience and perspective. It does not represent the opinions of the other people involved, and it should not be taken as a statement of the project’s current or official status. Portions of the original article were written or aided with Generative Intelligence; this current version has been fully rewritten by me, the author.

Back in late 2023, I was trying to build a VR game. It went absolutely nowhere, but at the time, I needed an AI API for it. Since I was completely broke, it had to be free. A quick Google search brought me to a Discord server called Zukijourney.

I didn’t really get what it was at first. It was basically a free service that let people access different AI models using an OpenAI-compatible format, along with endpoints for images, audio, and roleplay bots. I originally just joined to grab an API key and leave, but I ended up sticking around because the chat was active and the people were cool.

I didn’t realize until much later how massive the project actually was. According to their own documentation, the project started in March 2023. By the end of that year, they were claiming over 200 million requests and thousands of daily users. Whether those numbers were perfectly accurate or slightly inflated, it was way bigger than the small-scale project I thought I’d stumbled into.1

  1. March 2023The project begins with the zuki.gm bot.
  2. Late 2023The API goes public and the project reports its first 200 million requests.
  3. 2024-2025The API code, documentation, tests, and related projects are published on GitHub.
  4. February 2025The v4 API code is revealed in the public repository.
  5. November/December 2025The raid happens and the group loses access to the codebase.
  6. 2026Most of the executives leave and the project goes quiet.

Getting involved

Eventually, I became good friends with the creators, including Kashi, Leander, and Lukinhas. After I built a random Python wrapper for the API just for fun, they invited me into their inner circle, and I started helping out with the actual backend.

My contributions were pretty basic: finding new endpoints to scrape, fixing provider IDs, and troubleshooting minor bugs. A lot of the time we just hung out in our group chat, talking about random ideas. Over time, I stopped coding and shifted over to support and IT stuff for the Discord server.

We eventually started calling everyone in that chat an “executive,” which was just a fancy term for the handful of us who handled support tickets and tried to keep the API from crashing.

My old username, Launchers, is still credited in the docs. It is weird to look at now. Honestly, I did not do that much in the grand scheme of things, but seeing my name listed as a main contributor on a project serving thousands of users felt like a huge deal back then.

The G4F community

Zukijourney wasn’t the only project doing this. There was a whole ecosystem of free, reverse-proxied AI services, usually referred to as the G4F (GPT4Free) community. It was a deeply chronically online space, constantly fueled by weird rivalries, petty drama, and people jumping between competing servers.2

I never really kept up with who was fighting who. People were constantly accusing each other of stealing scrapers or leaking code, and the drama never stopped. Zukijourney actually kept a written archive of incidents in the scene, which tells you how absurdly common it was.

Then in winter 2025, that drama finally caught up to us.

The raid

Around November or December of 2025, everything fell apart overnight.

Suddenly, none of us could access the codebase. Lukinhas, who was basically second-in-command and a close friend, was abruptly kicked from the group chat. Right after that, most of the staff got banned from the Discord server, and the server itself was completely defaced.

It took us a while to figure out what happened. From our perspective, it looked like Lukinhas had been working behind our backs with a rival API group and helped them trash almost two years of our work.

I only saw what went down from our side of the chat, so I don’t know his side of the story. There was never any real closure or official explanation. We didn’t lose the actual code forever since we could always find new sources, but the trust we had built was completely gone.

The code was not lost forever. What we could not replace was the trust between people who had been working together for so long.

The aftermath

After the raid, the momentum was just dead. The core friend group got back together, minus Lukinhas, but access to the code was locked down entirely to Kashi. The project basically went back to being a solo effort, just like how it started.

The Discord server went quiet. We still talked in our group chat, but way less than before. The API was still technically running, but the spark that made working on it fun had completely evaporated.

Today

It’s been almost a year since then. Most of the old staff have quietly moved on, mostly because the motivation just isn’t there anymore. As far as I know, Kashi stopped working on it too to focus on real-life stuff.

I don’t even know if the API is still online right now. It might be, but the project is dead to me.

Zukijourney was a massive part of my life for a couple of years. I learned how to build things, dealt with weird technical headaches, and made genuine friends with people I never would have met otherwise. It was a good run while it lasted.

“And so our great adventure comes to an end.”

  • Tintin, The Adventures of Tintin: Red Rackham’s Treasure
1These figures and dates come from Zukijourney's own API README, bot documentation, and public repositories. They may not be fully accurate because they were self-reported and are not independently verified.
2G4F is short for GPT4Free. In this context, it refers to the wider community of free AI services and reverse proxies, not just one specific project.