compose/AI_POLICY.md

AI Usage Policy

This is the shared AI usage policy for Moby and Docker open source projects. It sets the baseline for AI-assisted issues, pull requests, and discussion across repositories.

• Disclose AI usage. Say what you used: Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT, whatever, and roughly how much of the work it did, in the issue or PR description. If it's not disclosed and a maintainer suspects otherwise, expect the issue or PR to get closed.

• Skip the AI attribution trailer. Disclosure belongs in the PR description, not the commit message. Add a Co-Authored-By: trailer for a human who actually worked on the change, not for the tool you used to write it. Whoever opens the PR signs off on it and owns it, no matter what wrote the first draft.

• Review before you post. Anything AI helped produce (an issue, a PR description, a review reply, a code change) gets read and edited by a human before it goes out. Using AI to draft a reply is fine, including to bridge a language gap. Posting raw, unreviewed output isn't. Understand it, check it's right, and own it before it goes out under your name.

• Keep it short. Lead with a plain-language summary of the problem or change. If there's real detail worth keeping (logs, reasoning, alternatives you tried), put it in a collapsible section instead of a wall of text:

  <details>
  <summary>Details</summary>
  
  ...supporting detail here...
  
  </details>
  

  Some AI-written reports do contain useful detail; the point is to surface the actionable part, not to strip the detail out.

• Fix the bug, not the file. Don't fold in drive-by refactoring, typo fixes, or reformatting just because AI made them easy to generate. Spotted something else worth fixing? Open it separately. Smaller diffs review faster and carry less risk.

• Landing the PR isn't the finish line. If your change causes a regression, or draws a follow-up question, show up for it. A PR that exists to pad a contribution history, with no intent to follow through, isn't the kind of contribution we want.

• Repeated violations have consequences. Maintainers can close submissions that ignore this policy, and repeat offenders get restricted or banned.

No contribution farming

Contribution farming is forbidden. Do not submit pull requests in an attempt to inflate contribution counts, build a public portfolio or gain repository activity rather than to improve the project.

Examples include:

• opening pull requests without verifying the problem or testing the proposed solution;
• submitting an AI-assisted pull request for a previously unreported problem without first opening an issue, allowing maintainers to verify the need, and receiving their approval to proceed;
• splitting one logical change into multiple trivial pull requests without a clear motivation;
• submitting mechanical, cosmetic, generated, or speculative changes without a concrete user or maintenance benefit.

Maintainers may choose to close such submissions without detailed review or even ban contributors who repeatedly engage in this behavior.

This rule is based on submission quality and behavior, not contributor experience or tool choice. First-time contributors and appropriately scoped small fixes are welcome when they address a real, verified problem or need.

Approved issues for AI-assisted PRs

Some repos only accept AI-assisted PRs against an issue a maintainer has already triaged and approved: no speculative PRs built straight from an AI-generated idea. This policy doesn't mandate a specific label or workflow; repos are free to adopt it and tighten it, for example requiring a status/approved label before AI-assisted work starts. Check the repo's own CONTRIBUTING.md or AGENTS.md for what applies there.

These rules apply to outside contributions. Maintainers can use their own judgment with AI tools, earned through their track record on the project.

There are Humans Here

These projects are maintained by humans, on volunteer time.

Every issue and PR is read by a person, not a queue. A low-effort, unverified submission dumps the cost of validation onto whoever picks it up. AI doesn't change that: it just makes it easier to generate more of it, faster.

We're writing these rules because we're seeing AI-generated content that hasn't been checked, ignores project conventions, or solves a problem nobody has. Until that changes, we need something explicit to protect maintainer time.

AI is Welcome Here

Plenty of maintainers on these projects use AI tools daily, and the projects themselves are built with AI assistance. This isn't an anti-AI policy.

It exists because of a rise in low-quality AI-generated contributions: ones that don't address a real need or follow project conventions. The target is contribution quality and accountability, not the tool that produced it.