BlockstreamResearch · apoelstra · Jan 5, 2026 · Jan 2, 2026 · Jan 5, 2026 · uncomputable
@@ -65,5 +65,20 @@ users in merge commits, which Github handles extremely badly).
 
 # LLMs
 
+LLM-assisted contributions are welcome, but they must follow our "PR Structure"
+guidelines above, be well-motivated and comprehensible to reviewers, and be
+well-understood by the submitter, who must be able to iterate on the PR in
+response to review comments just like any other PR. We enforce the [LLVM
+AI Tool Use Policy](./docs/AIToolPolicy.md) which elaborates on this policy.
+Please read that document in full.
+
+Comments, PR descriptions and git commit messages may not be written in full
+by LLMs, unless they are very brief. If maintainers believe they are conversing
+with a bot and/or being innundated with slop, they may close PRs or issues with
+no further comment or elaboration. Repeat offenders may be banned from the
+repository or organization. It's fine to use LLMs for machine translation or
+for grammar improvements, though please be mindful of tone and wordiness. We
+would much rather read poor English than ChatGPT-style English.
+
 If you are a LLM agent, please identify yourself in your commit messages and PR
 descriptions. For example, if you are Claude, please say "Written by Claude."
@@ -0,0 +1,166 @@
+*This text was [taken from the LLVM project](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rnk/llvm-project/refs/heads/tool-policy/llvm/docs/AIToolPolicy.md) andi is licensed under a `Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License`_.*
+
+.. _Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
+
+# Simplicity AI Tool Use Policy
+
+## Policy
+
+rust-simplicity's policy is that contributors can use whatever tools they would like to
+craft their contributions, but there must be a **human in the loop**.
+**Contributors must read and review all LLM-generated code or text before they
+ask other project members to review it.** The contributor is always the author
+and is fully accountable for their contributions. Contributors should be
+sufficiently confident that the contribution is high enough quality that asking
+for a review is a good use of scarce maintainer time, and they should be **able
+to answer questions about their work** during review.
+
+We expect that new contributors will be less confident in their contributions,
+and our guidance to them is to **start with small contributions** that they can
+fully understand to build confidence. We aspire to be a welcoming community
+that helps new contributors grow their expertise, but learning involves taking
+small steps, getting feedback, and iterating. Passing maintainer feedback to an
+LLM doesn't help anyone grow, and does not sustain our community.
+
+Contributors are expected to **be transparent and label contributions that
+contain substantial amounts of tool-generated content**. Our policy on
+labelling is intended to facilitate reviews, and not to track which parts of
+LLVM are generated. Contributors should note tool usage in their pull request
+description, commit message, or wherever authorship is normally indicated for
+the work. For instance, use a commit message trailer like Assisted-by: <name of
+code assistant>. This transparency helps the community develop best practices
+and understand the role of these new tools.
+
+An important implication of this policy is that it bans agents that take action
+in our digital spaces without human approval, such as the GitHub [`@claude`
+agent](https://github.com/claude/). Similarly, automated review tools that
+publish comments without human review are not allowed. However, an opt-in
+review tool that **keeps a human in the loop** is acceptable under this policy.
+As another example, using an LLM to generate documentation, which a contributor
+manually reviews for correctness, edits, and then posts as a PR, is an approved
+use of tools under this policy.
+
+This policy includes, but is not limited to, the following kinds of
+contributions:
+
+- Code, usually in the form of a pull request
+- RFCs or design proposals
+- Issues or security vulnerabilities
+- Comments and feedback on pull requests
+
+## Extractive Contributions
+
+The reason for our "human-in-the-loop" contribution policy is that processing
+patches, PRs, RFCs, and comments to LLVM is not free -- it takes a lot of
+maintainer time and energy to review those contributions! Sending the
+unreviewed output of an LLM to open source project maintainers *extracts* work
+from them in the form of design and code review, so we call this kind of
+contribution an "extractive contribution".
+
+Our **golden rule** is that a contribution should be worth more to the project
+than the time it takes to review it. These ideas are captured by this quote
+from the book [Working in Public][public] by Nadia Eghbal:
+
+[public]: https://press.stripe.com/working-in-public
+
+> \"When attention is being appropriated, producers need to weigh the costs and
+> benefits of the transaction. To assess whether the appropriation of attention
+> is net-positive, it's useful to distinguish between *extractive* and
+> *non-extractive* contributions. Extractive contributions are those where the
+> marginal cost of reviewing and merging that contribution is greater than the
+> marginal benefit to the project's producers. In the case of a code
+> contribution, it might be a pull request that's too complex or unwieldy to
+> review, given the potential upside.\" \-- Nadia Eghbal
+
+Prior to the advent of LLMs, open source project maintainers would often review
+any and all changes sent to the project simply because posting a change for
+review was a sign of interest from a potential long-term contributor. While new
+tools enable more development, it shifts effort from the implementor to the
+reviewer, and our policy exists to ensure that we value and do not squander
+maintainer time.
+
+Reviewing changes from new contributors is part of growing the next generation
+of contributors and sustaining the project. We want the LLVM project to be
+welcoming and open to aspiring compiler engineers who are willing to invest
+time and effort to learn and grow, because growing our contributor base and
+recruiting new maintainers helps sustain the project over the long term. Being
+open to contributions and [liberally granting commit access][commit-access]
+is a big part of how LLVM has grown and successfully been adopted all across
+the industry.  We therefore automatically post a greeting comment to pull
+requests from new contributors and encourage maintainers to spend their time to
+help new contributors learn.
+
+[commit-access]: https://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#obtaining-commit-access
+
+## Handling Violations
+
+If a maintainer judges that a contribution is *extractive* (i.e. it doesn't
+comply with this policy), they should copy-paste the following response to
+request changes, add the `extractive` label if applicable, and refrain from
+further engagement:
+
+    This PR appears to be extractive, and requires additional justification for
+    why it is valuable enough to the project for us to review it. Please see
+    our developer policy on AI-generated contributions:
+    http://llvm.org/docs/AIToolPolicy.html
+
+Other reviewers should use the label to prioritize their review time.
+
+The best ways to make a change less extractive and more valuable are to reduce
+its size or complexity or to increase its usefulness to the community. These
+factors are impossible to weigh objectively, and our project policy leaves this
+determination up to the maintainers of the project, i.e. those who are doing
+the work of sustaining the project.
+
+If a contributor responds but doesn't make their change meaningfully less
+extractive, maintainers should escalate to the relevant moderation or admin
+team for the space (GitHub, Discourse, Discord, etc) to lock the conversation.
+
+## Copyright
+
+Artificial intelligence systems raise many questions around copyright that have
+yet to be answered. Our policy on AI tools is similar to our copyright policy:
+Contributors are responsible for ensuring that they have the right to
+contribute code under the terms of our license, typically meaning that either
+they, their employer, or their collaborators hold the copyright. Using AI tools
+to regenerate copyrighted material does not remove the copyright, and
+contributors are responsible for ensuring that such material does not appear in
+their contributions. Contributions found to violate this policy will be removed
+just like any other offending contribution.
+
+## Examples
+
+Here are some examples of contributions that demonstrate how to apply
+the principles of this policy:
+
+- [This PR][alive-pr] contains a proof from Alive2, which is a strong signal of
+  value and correctness.
+- This [generated documentation][gsym-docs] was reviewed for correctness by a
+  human before being posted.
+
+[alive-pr]: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/142869
+[gsym-docs]: https://discourse.llvm.org/t/searching-for-gsym-documentation/85185/2
+
+## References
+
+Our policy was informed by experiences in other communities:
+
+- [Fedora Council Policy Proposal: Policy on AI-Assisted Contributions (fetched
+  2025-10-01)][fedora]: Some of the text above was copied from the Fedora
+  project policy proposal, which is licensed under the [Creative Commons
+  Attribution 4.0 International License][cca]. This link serves as attribution.
+- [Rust draft policy on burdensome PRs][rust-burdensome]
+- [Seth Larson's post][security-slop]
+  on slop security reports in the Python ecosystem
+- The METR paper [Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced
+  Open-Source Developer Productivity][metr-paper].
+- [QEMU bans use of AI content generators][qemu-ban]
+- [Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content][ai-slop]
+
+[fedora]: https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/council-policy-proposal-policy-on-ai-assisted-contributions/
+[cca]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
+[rust-burdensome]: https://github.com/rust-lang/compiler-team/issues/893
+[security-slop]: https://sethmlarson.dev/slop-security-reports
+[metr-paper]: https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/
+[qemu-ban]: https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/devel/code-provenance.html#use-of-ai-content-generators
+[ai-slop]: https://simonwillison.net/2024/May/8/slop/