Re: [PATCH] [v3] Documentation: Provide guidelines for tool-generated content

[Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com>]

On Fri, Jan 09, 2026 at 05:30:17PM +0100, Miguel Ojeda wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2026 at 8:28 PM Lorenzo Stoakes
> <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com> wrote:
> >
> > 'You _can_ be more transparent by adding information like this:...'
>
> I am not a native speaker, but my reading of that "can" was that it is
> suggesting ways to be more transparent that may or may not apply in
> particular cases, but the requirement of being transparent was already
> established by the previous sentence:
>
>     Second, when making a contribution, be transparent about
>     the origin of content in cover letters and changelogs.
>
> Which is reinforced by another imperative in the bullet point about prompts:
>
>     If code was largely generated from a single or short set of
>     prompts, include those prompts.
>
> Similarly, I read those other "might"s you quote like a set of things
> that could happen or not (and is not exhaustive) in particular cases
> and/or depending on the maintainer etc.

Right I mean I'm not disputing the logic of it, and the document _is_ well
written.

>
> At least that is my reading, and as far as I understood the TAB
> discussions, the goal of this patch was to document that non-trivial
> tool usage needs to be disclosed, including LLM use, and to me the
> patch already did that, but perhaps the wording can be more direct.

Yes, exactly. Really for me the whole thing is about emphasis.

The current version of my proposal is (hopefully) reaching towards quorum as it
takes into account feedback from Dave, Jens, Steven, and others probably who I
forget here (apologies) - see [0] - so I'm hoping that this _should_ be
acceptable as a means of establishing that emphasis without disrupting the
overall aims of the document?

It pleasingly is applicable to _all_ tooling and doesn't take a 'position' per
se on LLMs specifically.

[0]: https://lore.kernel.org/all/1273cff8-b114-4381-bbfe-aa228ce0d20d@lucifer.local/
>
> I hope that clarifies a bit...

Yes indeed :) thanks for that!

>
> Cheers,
> Miguel

Cheers, Lorenzo