Assisted-by tag

Assisted-by tag

[Marius Spix]

Hi there,

as the Linux kernel requires the new Assisted-by tag for AI-assisted
commits, I was researching how git handles such tags. Thereby I
observed the following behaviour:

git commit --signoff
* adds an empty line before the Signed-off-by tag
* ignores the Signed-off-by tag by checking for an empty commit message

git commit --trailer "\nAssisted-by: OpenAI"
* does not add an empty line (the "\n" is not converted to a newline)
* does not ignore the tag by checking for empty commit message

Since there will be more and more AI-assisted commits in projects like
the Linux kernel in the future, this should be taken in account.

When merging or squashing commits, that tag should also be
automatically applied to the new commit message to make it clear that
the commit is tainted by AI.

Your opinion?

Best regards

Marius

Re: Assisted-by tag

[Kristoffer Haugsbakk]

On Tue, Jun 16, 2026, at 21:25, Marius Spix wrote:
> as the Linux kernel requires the new Assisted-by tag for AI-assisted
> commits, I was researching how git handles such tags. Thereby I
> observed the following behaviour:
>
> git commit --signoff
> * adds an empty line before the Signed-off-by tag
> * ignores the Signed-off-by tag by checking for an empty commit message

That a bare message which is just `Signed-off-by` is considered an
“empty” commit message seems like a historical quirk. It checks
specifically for that tag/trailer.

>
> git commit --trailer "\nAssisted-by: OpenAI"
> * does not add an empty line (the "\n" is not converted to a newline)
> * does not ignore the tag by checking for empty commit message

This is just a regular trailer. I don’t know why you have a `\n`.

    git commit --trailer "Assisted-by: OpenAI"

Any number of these will populate the trailer block.

> Since there will be more and more AI-assisted commits in projects like
> the Linux kernel in the future, this should be taken in account.
>
> When merging or squashing commits, that tag should also be
> automatically applied to the new commit message to make it clear that
> the commit is tainted by AI.

That `Signed-off-by` has dedicated options and logic is historical
baggage at this point.

A 2013 [patch] to add `git commit --fixes` because the Linux Kernel uses
`Fixes` was rejected because the Git project considers tags/trailers
project-specific. Instead git-interpret-trailers(1) was born which
eventually provided the code base for `git commit --trailer` and similar
options.

  [patch]: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20131027013402.GA7146@leaf/

Handling how trailers are added is also deemed project-specific. There
are only the configurations and options that git-interpret-trailers(1)
provides. And handling that commits are rewritten (combined and so on)
in such a way that trailer-taint sticks is beyond any discussion I’ve
seen on the subject.