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

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

On Tue, Jul 07, 2026 at 11:49:31AM +0200, David Hildenbrand (Arm) wrote:
> On 7/7/26 11:20, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 03, 2026 at 08:22:20PM +0200, David Hildenbrand (Arm) wrote:
> >> On 7/3/26 18:32, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I'd support a patch that replaces
> >>>
> >>> Assisted-by: Claude:claude-3-opus coccinelle sparse
> >>>
> >>> with
> >>>
> >>> Assisted-by: LLM # generate some test cases
> >>>
> >>> and rewrites the Attribution section of
> >>> Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst accordingly.
> >>>
> >>> I think most people in this mail thread have expressed that how
> >>> generative AI was used is the most important information, and several
> >>> people (including myself) have expressed a desire to stop the free
> >>> advertising. Unless I missed something, I don't think anyone has
> >>> expressed an interest in keeping the agent name and model.
> >>
> >> Yes, that's something I would enjoy seeing. Who reading along has a problem with
> >> that? (assuming that the tag must stay)
> > 
> > I think the silence suggests nobody :)
> > 
> > What we could do is send a patch to simply add a section on adding a comment
> > explaining _what_ used an LLM and strongly suggesting it would be helpful to do
> > so.
> > 
> > That should hopefully be uncontroversial, then later (or alongside that?) we
> > could submit an RFC for making the language move to 'you MUST do this', as that
> > will probably be the more controversial bit.
> 
> Maybe we should just spell out about which scenario we care about where we really
> expect the disclosure.
> 
> Sure, it might be more controversial and we could have that in a separate patch.
> 
> I was thinking of the following end result:
> 
> diff --git a/Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst b/Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst
> index 899f4459c52d2..4c2ab4dfc6da7 100644
> --- a/Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst
> +++ b/Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst
> @@ -40,20 +40,37 @@ Attribution
>  ===========
>  
>  When AI tools contribute to kernel development, proper attribution
> -helps track the evolving role of AI in the development process.
> -Contributions should include an Assisted-by tag in the following format::
> +helps track the evolving role of AI in the development process. Further,
> +for reviewers and maintainers it is also crucially important to know how
> +AI tools were used.
>  
> -  Assisted-by: AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION [TOOL1] [TOOL2]
> +Contributions that used AI to generate significant portions of code,
> +comments, or patch descriptions must include an Assisted-by tag in the
> +following format::
>  
> -Where (preferred):
> +  Assisted-by: LLM # brief description of usage
> +
> +Or alternatively::
> +
> +  Assisted-by: AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION # brief description of usage

I would like to drop this one. As I understand, several people objected
to including the product name in the git history as it is just free
adverising, and nobody objected to dropping it.

> +
> +Where::
>  
>  * ``AGENT_NAME`` is the name of the AI tool or framework
>  * ``MODEL_VERSION`` is the specific model version used
> -* ``[TOOL1] [TOOL2]`` are optional specialized analysis tools used
> -  (e.g., coccinelle, sparse, smatch, clang-tidy)
> +
> +If other tools were used, they should be specified through a dedicated
> +Assisted-by tag in the following format::
> +
> +  Assisted-by: [TOOL1] [TOOL2]
> +
> +Where ``[TOOL1] [TOOL2]`` are specialized analysis tools used
> +(e.g., coccinelle, sparse, smatch, clang-tidy)
>  
>  Basic development tools (git, gcc, make, editors) should not be listed.
>  
> -Example::
> +Examples::
>  
> -  Assisted-by: Claude:claude-3-opus coccinelle sparse
> +  Assisted-by: LLM # translate patch description
> +  Assisted-by: Claude:claude-3-opus # generate most of the code
> +  Assisted-by: coccinelle sparse
> 
> 
> But I am not really sure why we should specify other tools here, really.
> People usually do that as part of the patch description, including sharing
> coccinelle scripts etc.

We've mentioned coccinelle usage in commit messages, with a copy of the
semantic patch, for years and years and I'm not aware of anyone giving a
technical reason why we need a tag instead. The only reason I see is to
avoid pointing specifically at LLMs and normalize their usage as "just
another tool". That's a political reason, not a technical one.

> Because looking at the history:
> 
> $ git log | grep "Assisted-by" | grep -E "(coccinelle|sparse|smatch|clang)"
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle
>     Assisted-by: unnamed:deepseek-v3.2 coccinelle

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart