I do think it's useful to know when tools were used in generating
significant portions of a PR, but it's not strictly necessary.
Is there already a 'methods' field? E.g. for prompts, "Solve this
problem as if you were <different tool>."
Future bots may be able to debug better with the info.
Bill
--
Phobrain.com
On 2026-02-10 14:33, Stefan van der Walt via NumPy-Discussion wrote:
On Tue, Feb 10, 2026, at 12:35, Ralf Gommers via NumPy-Discussion
wrote:
The way I read Matthew's comment is not that we should prescribe how
people use their tools, but that we should be aware of the risks we are
facing,
This part is fine in the abstract - but that's also true for the
environmental and societal impacts.
Those things don't typically directly affect development, so I don't
think they're comparable. But it may be that we just leave this entire
category as "things you [as a contributor] need to worry about for your
own sake".
and also communicate those risks to contributors who want to use AI
tools to do NumPy development.
This doesn't necessarily make sense to me. If I try to figure out what
all the hand waving means concretely - i.e., "where would we want to
communicate such possible risks" - I think my answer is: probably
nowhere.
[...]
If there is a concrete idea/proposal for a docs section, policy
content, or anything like that, please clarify.
Here's the very general draft text we're currently proposing for
skimage:
"""
1. indicate the tool used, as well as how, in the PR
description;
2. make sure you *carefully review* and *fully understand* all
proposed changes so we may have a conversation about them; and
3. be careful not to breach any copyright or license terms
(yes, we
take those seriously!).
"""
Scikit-learn has something a bit more explicit:
https://scikit-learn.org/dev/developers/contributing.html#automated-contributions-policy
Before, it felt unnecessary to have such guidelines, because it would be
silly to make a contribution without understanding it (how would you
even come up with the patch). But, now it is entirely feasible to do so.
I'm also fine with not having any policy and just evaluating each
contribution on its own merits. I do think it's useful to know when
tools were used in generating significant portions of a PR, but it's not
strictly necessary.
Stéfan
_______________________________________________
NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
https://mail.python.org/mailman3//lists/numpy-discussion.python.org
Member address: [email protected]
_______________________________________________
NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
https://mail.python.org/mailman3//lists/numpy-discussion.python.org
Member address: [email protected]
