Hacker News Highlights the Linux Kernel's New Rules for AI-Assisted Contributions

What the Hacker News thread surfaced

A Hacker News post pointed readers to the Linux kernel tree's new AI Coding Assistants document. At crawl time, the thread had 510 points and 406 comments, which shows the topic has moved from hypothetical debate to concrete process governance for one of the most conservative large open-source projects.

What the document actually requires

The kernel text is short and procedural. It says AI-assisted contributions still have to follow the normal kernel development process, including the project's development, coding-style, and patch-submission rules. On licensing, it restates that contributed code must be compatible with GPL-2.0-only and use the appropriate SPDX identifiers.

Human responsibility stays explicit

The most concrete legal rule is that AI agents must not add Signed-off-by tags. The document says only humans can certify the Developer Certificate of Origin, and that the human submitter is responsible for reviewing AI-generated code, checking licensing compliance, adding their own sign-off, and taking full responsibility for the patch. That keeps accountability attached to a real contributor instead of a tool invocation.

How attribution is supposed to work

The attribution mechanism is an Assisted-by tag in the form AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION [TOOL1] [TOOL2]. The example given is Assisted-by: Claude:claude-3-opus coccinelle sparse. The document also says ordinary tools such as git, gcc, make, and editors should not be listed. In practice, that gives maintainers a lightweight provenance trail without turning commit messages into full prompt transcripts.

Why this matters

The key signal is not that the kernel project is endorsing autonomous patch generation. The signal is that maintainers are standardizing disclosure, legal responsibility, and compatibility expectations early. For teams building internal AI coding policies, the Linux approach is notable because it stays narrow: follow existing process, keep the DCO human, and make AI assistance visible enough to audit later.

Linux kernel policy document | Hacker News discussion