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

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

On 7/2/26 23:17, Boris Burkov wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 05:50:15PM +0100, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 12:48:22PM -0400, Jeff Layton wrote:
>>>
>>> Do we need a tag for this though?
>>>
>>> This seems like the kind of information that we would always require in
>>> the cover letter of a series (or the little place in an individual
>>> patch for comments that don't get merged). That would also allow you to
>>> convey a lot more nuance about how it was used.
>>>
>>> ISTM asking people to disclose LLM usage in a cover letter would give
>>> everyone what they want: Information about whether and possibly how an
>>> LLM was used, and it also wouldn't clutter up the changelogs with these
>>> tags.
>>
>> It's much much clearer and easier to just have a standardised tag for that.
>>
>> You can see that (and grep for that) immediately, vague paragraphs not so much.
>>
> 
> At the risk of being pedantic on a point where I think the document is
> kind of lacking:
> 
> What level of assistance crosses the bar for an "Assisted-by: LLM" tag?
> 
> Some sample levels of assistance to illustrate the point:
> 
> 1. I used an llm to one-shot vibe-code a patch
> 2. I used an llm to write a patch but carefully reviewed every line
> 3. I used an llm to explore the design space for a patch but wrote it
> manually
> 4. I used an llm to debug or reproduce a kernel issue but then wrote the
> fix manually after fully understanding the defect
> 5. I used an llm to review a patch I wrote
> 6. I used an llm to research some chunk of code while writing a patch
> 7. I used Google while writing a patch and learned something valuable
> from the AI overview at the top
> 
> I personally would 100% use the tag for 1 or 2, and have already done
> so. I have not been doing it for 3-5, as I think that will basically
> make every patch llm-assisted to the point of the distinction being
> meaningless. If we should be doing it for 3-5 (or some subset thereof)
> then my mistake and I will certainly start doing so. I would hope most
> people agree 6-7 and similar need no tag.
> 
> Similar questions abound if you use an llm to help with writing the
> English text in the patch or emails.
> 
> I have a feeling that this ambiguity is part of the reason we aren't all
> agreeing on the value of the tag?

Yes, I raised something similar as reply to Christian's RFC [1], where I said
that for me the information *how* it was used is much more important:

"
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
"

That tag is it stands is pretty useless, really.

I assume most people only really use it for something in-between 1 and 2, but
*who knows*.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/r/5e7b9d23-4291-48fb-bdc6-47db82d33c80@kernel.org

-- 
Cheers,

David