Hello everyone,
Following the objection in the [LAZY CONSENSUS] thread, I am turning
this into a discussion. The change (#73660) has already been reverted
in #73669 (thanks Ash) - and apologies for merging it before the lazy
consensus ended; I thought it was uncontroversial, which it clearly
is not.
The original proposal, for PR descriptions drafted by AI agents:
* The description starts with a short "Human Summary" - a few
sentences typed by the human author, in their own words: why the
change is needed, key decisions, caveats.
* The agent-written description stays below it, in an "AI Summary"
section folded by default.
* Agents are instructed to ask the author for the Human Summary and
paste it verbatim - never to write, suggest or paraphrase it.
Ash's objection, as I understand it: the PR description should already
be written for humans, and it is how the author engages with the
community - so an explicitly labelled "Human Summary" reverses the
priority. His counter-proposal is to drop both the "Human Summary"
and "AI Summary" headers and put the agent text in a folded
<details><summary>AI Summary</summary> block.
I see it the other way round. Following the ASF Generative Tooling
guidance, we already require every such PR to state that it was
generated with AI - the reader knows up front that an agent was
involved. Given that, an explicit "Human Summary" is exactly the
signal that matters: it shows that the human was driving the change,
and that they understand it well enough to summarize - in their own
words - what the PR does and why. Without the label, the reader of an
AI-disclosed PR has no way to tell which part the author actually
wrote. This is the "centaur" - human in control - not the "reverse
centaur" or "meat proxy" [1].
Looking at it again, the two proposals are closer than it seems: both
put the author's own words on top and fold the agent's text below.
The actual differences are:
1. Should the human-written part be explicitly labelled
("Human Summary") so it is distinguishable in an AI-disclosed PR,
or just be the unlabelled top of the description?
2. Should the folded agent text be marked "AI Summary" (Ash suggests
the <details> summary label - that part we seem to agree on)?
3. Should agents be required to ask for the human part and refuse to
draft it themselves - or should that be left to the author?
Just to remind - this is **only** for PRs that are agenically generated.
If someone creates their PRs manually, without the AI agent, none of
this applies.
The template for PRs opened via GH UI is not supposed to have either section.
I'd love to hear what others think - especially those who review a lot
of agent-assisted PRs, and Shahar, who has been using this format
already.
[1]
https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-09-11-vulgar-thatcherism-there-is-an-alternative-f1428b42a8fd
J.
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