Maybe make Sashiko emails opt-in please?

Maybe make Sashiko emails opt-in please?

[lyude]

Hi! I was told on the github for sashiko that I should probably bring
this issue up here. (source:
https://github.com/sashiko-dev/sashiko/pull/112 )

I sent two patch series to the rust-for-linux mailing list last night,
and was a bit surprised to see that all of a sudden I am getting
Sashiko emails on my patches without having asked for them. Which
brings me to say - I really think this is a tool that needs to remain
opt-in. Or at the very least it needs an opt-out that at least silences
it trying to respond to a specific person's patches both directly and
via the mailing list.

I'm going to keep it short because I am really trying to avoid this
turning into a conversation about how I could benefit from these tools,
how useful people think they are for themselves, etc. I personally
don't find myself being more productive with these tools, primarily
because of the significant number of false-positives and the overhead
involved in filtering those by hand. I'm concerned that if these tools
are suddenly allowed to respond to people's patches publicly on the
mailing list, that it moves the responsibility for validating its
output away from the person using the tool, to the person submitting
the work - regardless of whether it's helping them fix real issues.

Keep in mind, I do want to be clear I think this is different from when
people use these tools on their own and bring that feedback up on the
mailing list. In that case you've taken the responsibility to actually
verify the validity (or at least the likely validity) of the issues the
AI pointed out. I certainly would have no issue with that and
appreciate the issue being brought up. I know a number of my coworkers
do this, and I've honestly not had any issues with it.

That's all, I'd love if this was opt-in - and not enabled for the
entire mailing list. Thank you.

Re: Maybe make Sashiko emails opt-in please?

[Alexandre Courbot]

On Thu Apr 23, 2026 at 10:10 AM JST, lyude wrote:
> Hi! I was told on the github for sashiko that I should probably bring
> this issue up here. (source:
> https://github.com/sashiko-dev/sashiko/pull/112 )
>
> I sent two patch series to the rust-for-linux mailing list last night,
> and was a bit surprised to see that all of a sudden I am getting
> Sashiko emails on my patches without having asked for them. Which
> brings me to say - I really think this is a tool that needs to remain
> opt-in. Or at the very least it needs an opt-out that at least silences
> it trying to respond to a specific person's patches both directly and
> via the mailing list.
>
> I'm going to keep it short because I am really trying to avoid this
> turning into a conversation about how I could benefit from these tools,
> how useful people think they are for themselves, etc. I personally
> don't find myself being more productive with these tools, primarily
> because of the significant number of false-positives and the overhead
> involved in filtering those by hand. I'm concerned that if these tools
> are suddenly allowed to respond to people's patches publicly on the
> mailing list, that it moves the responsibility for validating its
> output away from the person using the tool, to the person submitting
> the work - regardless of whether it's helping them fix real issues.
>
> Keep in mind, I do want to be clear I think this is different from when
> people use these tools on their own and bring that feedback up on the
> mailing list. In that case you've taken the responsibility to actually
> verify the validity (or at least the likely validity) of the issues the
> AI pointed out. I certainly would have no issue with that and
> appreciate the issue being brought up. I know a number of my coworkers
> do this, and I've honestly not had any issues with it.
>
> That's all, I'd love if this was opt-in - and not enabled for the
> entire mailing list. Thank you.

I agree that this kind of tool should be opt-in. Maybe we can make it
such as Sachiko reviews are only sent to the author of a patch if they
also Cc'd some sachiko@ address that acts as an opt-in?

Sachiko can still do reviews and post them on its web interface even
without it, but the author would not be explicitly notified in that
case.

Re: Maybe make Sashiko emails opt-in please?

[John Hubbard]

On 4/22/26 6:48 PM, Alexandre Courbot wrote:
> On Thu Apr 23, 2026 at 10:10 AM JST, lyude wrote:
... 
> I agree that this kind of tool should be opt-in. Maybe we can make it
> such as Sachiko reviews are only sent to the author of a patch if they
> also Cc'd some sachiko@ address that acts as an opt-in?

I love the idea of Sashiko remaining silent, unless it was specifically
Cc'd.

* Developers prefer tools that can "pre-review" and catch issues *before*
they post publicly.

    * checkpatch.pl does that.
    * sashiko could do that too! It could be triggered by a direct
      email sent only to sashiko.

* While debate continues about the false positive rate of AI-powered
code reviews vs. their value, there is *no* debate that the rate is
high enough to bother a significant fraction of kernel devs. We need
to respect that and configure the tool usage to be less, well, annoying.

This is important.

> 
> Sachiko can still do reviews and post them on its web interface even
> without it, but the author would not be explicitly notified in that
> case.

Yes, exactly.

I'm very impressed with sashiko, and want to get its feedback--in select
scenarios. Not on every patchset I post. And I believe that this is a
fairly common, widespread preference.
 

thanks,
-- 
John Hubbard

Re: Maybe make Sashiko emails opt-in please?

[Roman Gushchin]

Hey!

I'm totally happy to disable email delivery for rust-for-linux if Miguel
is onboard - I generally rely on maintainers for the decision how to use
Sashiko or not use at all. I have obviously zero interest in pushing it
against developers will, however it's hard to achieve a full consensus
on anything in a large group of people, so I have to prioritize maintainers
opinion.

Miguel, what do you think? I can keep you on cc, so that you will be
receiving reviews, but nobody else. That would be my personal preference
in this case.

Otherwise:
Unfortunately I can't provide Sashiko as a free service for an open set
of kernel engineers, I simple don't have a big enough budget to cover
associated compute costs. If there is some company which is willing to
cover it, we can probably set something up via LF - Sashiko as a project
belongs to LF.

I try to make it easy to set up local/corporate instances and also
try to make it work with any LLM providers. I personally only have
access to Gemini, so I'm somewhat limited in testing here and rely on
other contributors.

Thanks