Re: [PATCH RFC] coding-assistants: simplify attribution

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

On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 09:27:37AM +0200, Christian Brauner wrote:
> > What would be much more relevant to know is to which degree LLMs were used.
> > 
> > Assisted-by: LLM # translate commit message
> > Assisted-by: LLM # generate some test cases
> > Assisted-by: LLM # cleanup logic
> > Assisted-by: LLM # everything and I have no clue what any in here does
> 
> I think we should just drop any attribution as a general kernel-wide
> rule and let subsystems require them as needed. Then you can have all
> the complexity in mm for this that you think is needed for your
> workflow to function. This is precisely what the subsystem profiles are
> for. So maybe just add:
> 
> Documentation/process/maintainer-mm.rst
> 
> alongside
> 
> Documentation/process/maintainer-{tip,netdev,x86}.rst
> 
> and lay down the rules that you require for LLM based submissions in
> whatever detail you need.
> 
> I don't see how this additional commentary you want would ever be
> enforced consistently across the kernel or who would even enforce it. I
> don't need more beaurocracy to chase after people in my subsystems tbh.
> 
> The other thing is that I think this Assisted-by annotation is just
> noise in the changelog. If you want to know in detail what an LLM was
> used for when generating the patch it's mostly a signal for how
> "intense" of a review this will get afaict (already questionable imho
> but sure that's just something to disagree on).
> 
> If the information is mostly useful during review then I still would
> question why it has to end up in our git logs. It's completely
> irrelevant information imho.

Food for thought, the Kubernetes project has published a disclosure
policy ([1], reported by LWN.net at [2], with a blog post explaininig it
at [3]). Quoting LWN.net,

"Of note, the project requires disclosure when AI tools have been used
to assist in the creation of a contribution but forbids the use of
listing AI as a co-author or including "assisted-by" or "co-developed"
trailers to attribute work to an LLM tool."

I personally don't see a lot of value in the Assisted-by trailer, but I
would like the submitter to include the information in a place that
doesn't end up in the git commit history (cover letter or below the ---
line).

[1] https://www.kubernetes.dev/docs/guide/pull-requests/#ai-guidance
[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/1080144/
[3] https://kubernetes.io/blog/2026/06/26/open-source-maintainership-in-the-age-of-ai/

> > I thought we ask for that in some document, but couldn't immediately find it
> > (and nobody does that).

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart