I fully understand Mihai’s concern. With AI today, it is very easy to fix bugs and add features, but people can do so without really understanding Calcite. Because of this, the number of PRs is no longer a reliable signal of how familiar a contributor is with the project.
AI can now assist with writing code, reviewing code, and even proposing design solutions. As a result, it is very difficult to determine from a single contribution whether someone used AI or whether they truly understand Calcite. However, over multiple contributions, we can still form a rough judgment. By looking at a combination of signals such as the number of PRs, review activity, and overall community engagement, we can gradually build confidence. In the end, it still comes down to trust from the community. Best regards, Zhen ---- Replied Message ---- | From | Mihai Budiu<[email protected]> | | Date | 06/19/2026 00:57 | | To | dev<[email protected]> | | Cc | | | Subject | promoting committers | Hello all, Today we invite a developer to become a committer after they make several useful non-trivial contributions to the project. But these days, using agents, the barrier of entry for contributing to a project has been lowered substantially, and one can write useful code without a real understanding of the structure of a project. This is not a Calcite issue, I expect all open-source projects have to grapple with this. Does our committer selection process need adjustment? If so, how? Mihai
