[PATCH 6.6 112/166] checkpatch: add support for Assisted-by tag

Greg Kroah-Hartman
2026-04-24T13:38:21Z

From: Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>

commit d1db4118489fffd2b2f612140b7acbb477880839 upstream.

The Assisted-by tag was introduced in
Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst for attributing AI tool
contributions to kernel patches. However, checkpatch.pl did not recognize
this tag, causing two issues:

WARNING: Non-standard signature: Assisted-by:
ERROR: Unrecognized email address: 'AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION'

Fix this by:
1. Adding Assisted-by to the recognized $signature_tags list
2. Skipping email validation for Assisted-by lines since they use the
AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION format instead of an email address
3. Warning when the Assisted-by value doesn't match the expected format

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20260311215818.518930-1-sashal@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
Reported-by: Bart Van Assche <bvanassche@acm.org>
Acked-by: Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>
Cc: Andy Whitcroft <apw@canonical.com>
Cc: Dwaipayan Ray <dwaipayanray1@gmail.com>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Lukas Bulwahn <lukas.bulwahn@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
---
scripts/checkpatch.pl | 10 ++++++++++
1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)

--- a/scripts/checkpatch.pl
+++ b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
@@ -621,6 +621,7 @@ our $signature_tags = qr{(?xi:
Reviewed-by:|
Reported-by:|
Suggested-by:|
+ Assisted-by:|
To:|
Cc:
)};
@@ -3069,6 +3070,15 @@ sub process {
}
}

+ # Assisted-by uses AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION format, not email
+ if ($sign_off =~ /^Assisted-by:/i) {
+ if ($email !~ /^\S+:\S+/) {
+ WARN("BAD_SIGN_OFF",
+ "Assisted-by expects 'AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION [TOOL1] [TOOL2]' format\n" . $herecurr);
+ }
+ next;
+ }
+
my ($email_name, $name_comment, $email_address, $comment) = parse_email($email);
my $suggested_email = format_email(($email_name, $name_comment, $email_address, $comment));
if ($suggested_email eq "") {