Re: [PATCH] Documentation: remove the requirement for LLM attribution

[Andreas Dilger <adilger@dilger.ca>]

On Jul 2, 2026, at 20:57, Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 12:46:19PM -0500, Andreas Dilger wrote:
>> It would make sense IMHO to address the ignorance in the most expedient manner,
>> namely by telling the *LLM itself* to add this tag when it generates the commit
>> message and/or reviews the code.
>> 
>> This could be achieved by adding a statement in "AGENTS.md" in the root of the
>> source tree to this effect, or telling the agent to reference and follow rules
>> in Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst regarding the Assisted-by: tag.
> 
> This presupposes a particular workflow where the developer allows the
> LLM to generate git commits.  I don't do that.  I'll ask the LLM to
> modify the code, but then I'll generally fix it up --- very often by
> hand because I can edit the sources than entering a prompt and waiting
> for the LLM to figure out how to make the change.  I'll often run the
> test cases myself, since if it takes 24 hours of VM time, and 2 hours
> of wall clock time, I'm going to kick off the regression tests myself,
> and verify the test results.

Sure, and that holds true for many kernel developers, myself included.
I don't think you or any of the senior maintainers are the audience.

The point of my comment is that this is more likely to help contributors
who do *not* know/follow standard development practices and are more
likely to contribute AI-coded patches, which is AFAICS the main issue
in this discussion.

Also, the effort of doing so is very minimal and has no real downside.
Having the AI contribution policy clearly spelled out where an AI agent
can find it can only have a positive effect, even if not always followed.

Cheers, Andreas

> And I almost always write the commit description myself.  So when I
> say, "Assisted-by" it literally is "Assisted by".  It is not "vibe
> coded where the LLM generates thousands of lines of code that the
> human being doesn't understand before sending ta pull request."  And
> that's probably why you'll see people asserting that LLM generated
> code can't possibly be accepted due to copyright reasons.  There's a
> big difference between asking an LLM to modify already existing code
> to add a feature, or to fix a bug, and to vibe code a new OS from
> scratch.  One is far less likely to be a copyright violation than the
> other.
> 
> - Ted


Cheers, Andreas