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

["David Hildenbrand (Arm)" <david@kernel.org>]

On 7/7/26 11:55, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 07, 2026 at 11:49:31AM +0200, David Hildenbrand (Arm) wrote:
>> On 7/7/26 11:20, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
>>>
>>> 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
>> +
>> +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
> 
> LGTM! Do you want to send that then? People can comment on the actual path then
> (probably worth cc'ing everybody here on that also).

Let's first gather some more thoughts on the rough direction before spinning of
yet another discussion. :)

-- 
Cheers,

David