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Prohibit AI-generated commit messages #1510

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jbeder merged 2 commits into from
Oct 11, 2026
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Prohibit AI-generated commit messages #1510

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Prohibit AI-generated commit messages
jbeder Oct 10, 2026
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Minor wording tweaks.
jbeder Oct 11, 2026
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3 changes: 2 additions & 1 deletion CONTRIBUTING.md
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Expand Up @@ -41,4 +41,5 @@ The following rules are in service of producing correct, maintainable code while
1. You (the author of the PR) are responsible for the PR, regardless of the tools you use to create it. Make sure you understand it thoroughly and agree with its contents before you submit a PR.
2. Corollary: AI is not a co-author, AI is a tool. If you wouldn't list Emacs as a co-author, don't list Claude either. (Maybe it will be someday, but not yet.)
3. Do not use AI to generate documentation. It's fine for code, but it's [painful](https://samkriss.substack.com/p/if-you-let-ai-do-your-writing-i-will) to read AI text.
4. No "low effort" AI PRs. Don't just paste an issue into Claude and ask it to fix it; don't just ask it for a vulnerability report. That's fine as a starting point, but if that's *all* you do, then you haven't provided any value; you've just added work for the maintainers, who could have easily pasted the issue into Claude themselves.
4. Corollary: Write your own PR and commit messages; do NOT use AI to generate them. These descriptions are key to understand the point of a change, and AIs are very bad at them. They litter the message with garbage like "4931/4931 tests pass" and rarely explain the purpose well. (Maybe it will someday, but not yet.) It's OK for the entire code change to be AI-generated (pending you stand behind it, per the other rules), but NOT the commit message.
5. No "low effort" AI PRs. Don't just paste an issue into Claude and ask it to fix it; don't just ask it for a vulnerability report. That's fine as a starting point, but if that's *all* you do, then you haven't provided any value; you've just added work for the maintainers, who could have easily pasted the issue into Claude themselves.
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