Re: [PATCH] [v5] Documentation: Provide guidelines for tool-generated content

Sasha Levin
2026-01-13T18:43:15Z

On Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 10:20:44AM -0800, dan.j.williams@intel.com wrote:
>Dan Carpenter wrote:
>[..]
>> If tools permit you to generate a contribution automatically, expect
>> additional scrutiny in proportion to how much of it was generated.
>>
>> Every kernel patch needs careful review from multiple people. Please,
>> don't start the public review process until after you have carefully
>> reviewed the patches yourself. If you don't have the necessary
>> expertise to review kernel code, consider asking for help first before
>> sending them to the main list.
>
>Note, I do not want additional changes to this document, my Reviewed-by
>still stands with this version, it is good, ship it.
>
>However, I do want to endorse this sentiment as uniquely capturing a
>truism of kernel development that perhaps belongs in
>Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst. It captures it in a way
>that avoids the conceit of the "slop is special" argument.
>
>Contributions are accepted in large part based in trust in the author.
>So much so that even long time contributors self censor, self mistrust,
>based on the adage "debugging is harder than developing, if you develop
>at the limits of your cleverness you will not be able to debug the
>result." Tools potentially allow you to develop beyond the limits of
>your own cleverness which implicates the result as "undebuggable" and
>unmaintainable.
>
>So a simple rule of "generally you should be able to demonstrate the
>ability to substantively review a contribution of similar complexity
>before expecting the kernel community to engage in earnest" mitigates
>the asymmetric threat of AI contributions *and* contributors that have
>not built-up enough trust capital with their upstream maintainer.

Looking at recent history (v6.12..v6.18) we had 1902 authors (a third of
overall contributors) who contributed a single commit. Out of those 1902, only
177 have a Reviewed-by tag pointing to them.

With a rule like the above, 1700+ contributors would have not been able to send
their patch in.

--
Thanks,
Sasha