Hello all, I know that many of you do not like AI-generated contributions. This proposal does not ask anyone to like them or to use them. Its goal is to make the AI-assisted work that already reaches us better, so that it costs reviewers less time.
Since 1 August 2026, 2007 of the 2954 non-merge commits on master have an Assisted-by line, from 84 authors (many of them are mine, so I know these tools and their faults well). AI-assisted work is not coming: it is here, and it will grow. Many of these contributions break rules that we already have. Examples from the last weeks: - test logs in a PR that the named test program cannot print; - PR descriptions that describe an older version of the code; - 349 of the 2005 commits with both lines have Assisted-by below Signed-off-by (CONTRIBUTING.md 1.5 says above); - fixes with no evidence of the bug and no test; - code that CI does not compile, because no CI configuration enables it; - an agent configuration file with an authorization header committed to master (#21540 removes it). Each of these costs a reviewer time. The agents do not do this on purpose: master (#21540 removes it). Each of these costs a reviewer time. The agents do not do this on purpose: they do not know our rules, because nothing in the repository tells them. Many coding agents read a file named AGENTS.md at the top of a repository before they change anything; the others read it when the user tells them to. I propose that we add one. The draft is here: https://github.com/casaroli/nuttx/blob/agents-md-v2/AGENTS.md What it is: - It restates CONTRIBUTING.md and INVIOLABLES.md as steps that an agent can follow: reproduce the bug first, never invent logs, say what was not tested, add a regression test in nuttx-apps, check the documentation, the size of small configurations, Make/CMake parity and breaking changes, run checkpatch, use depends-on correctly. - It keeps the human responsible. The agent must never add Signed-off-by. It must stop and ask the author to read the change and sign it off before anything is pushed. - Human contributors can ignore it. You already follow these rules, and they stay in CONTRIBUTING.md. - It gives reviewers something to point to: "read AGENTS.md" is shorter than the same review comment for the tenth time. It does not say that AI contributions are welcome, and it does not lower any requirement. If anything, it asks agents for more evidence than many human PRs give today. Please send comments on the content or on the idea. If there is agreement, I will open a PR with the file, and change it with your comments. Best regards, Marco Casaroli
