Hi all, Thanks Marco for raising this to the community's attention
I think that it makes sense to try and correct the basic things since we see an influx of AI Assisted contributions +1 for this initiative Best regards Alin J On Sat, Nov 7, 2026 at 2:13 PM Marco C. <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 >
