Linux Kernel Releases Official Guidelines for AI Coding Assistants

The Linux kernel official documentation now includes a “Coding Assistants” guide, providing standards for developers using AI tools to contribute to kernel development. This marks the first formal policy from a major open-source project regarding AI-assisted programming.

Core Requirements

AI tools participating in Linux kernel development must follow standard processes:

• Follow kernel development process documentation (development-process.rst)
• Follow coding style guidelines (coding-style.rst)
• Follow patch submission standards (submitting-patches.rst)

License Compliance

All contributions must comply with kernel licensing requirements:

• All code must be compatible with GPL-2.0-only
• Use appropriate SPDX license identifiers

Key Restrictions

AI agents MUST NOT add Signed-off-by tags — only humans can legally certify the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO). The human submitter is responsible for:

• Reviewing all AI-generated code
• Ensuring compliance with licensing requirements
• Adding their own Signed-off-by tag
• Taking full responsibility for the contribution

AI Contribution Attribution

To track AI’s role in the development process, contributions should include an Assisted-by tag:

Assisted-by: AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION [TOOL1] [TOOL2] Example: Assisted-by: Claude:claude-3-opus coccinelle sparse

Read the full document at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst