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

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

On 7/7/26 14:40, Laurent Pinchart 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
> 
> I would like to drop this one. As I understand, several people objected
> to including the product name in the git history as it is just free
> adverising, and nobody objected to dropping it.

Yeah. I mean, we could go the following direction (dropping the models and
encouraging also a description of usage for other tools), but not sure how
much pushback we will get:


diff --git a/Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst b/Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst
index 899f4459c52d2..a085a15d59990 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst
@@ -40,20 +40,26 @@ 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:
+  Assisted-by: LLM # mandatory brief description of usage
 
-* ``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)
+Similarly, usage of other specialized analysis tools should be
+indicated through an Assisted-by tag in the following format::
 
-Basic development tools (git, gcc, make, editors) should not be listed.
+  Assisted-by: [TOOL1] [TOOL2] # optional brief description of usage
 
-Example::
+Examples for ``[TOOL1] [TOOL2]`` are coccinelle, sparse, smatch, and
+clang-tidy. Basic development tools (git, gcc, make, editors) should not
+be listed.
 
-  Assisted-by: Claude:claude-3-opus coccinelle sparse
+Examples::
+
+  Assisted-by: LLM # translate patch description
+  Assisted-by: coccinelle # batch conversion with small manual fixups
davhil01@e142025:~/git/linux$ 

-- 
Cheers,

David