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Draft policy on the usage of generative AI tools #177

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87 changes: 83 additions & 4 deletions CONTRIBUTING.md
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Expand Up @@ -48,6 +48,7 @@ read it carefully.
- [Testing your code](#testing-your-code)
- [Documentation](#documentation)
- [Code Review](#code-review)
* [Policy on Usage of Generative AI Tools](#policy-on-usage-of-generative-ai-tools)
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@leouieda leouieda Apr 28, 2026

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* [Policy on Usage of Generative AI Tools](#policy-on-usage-of-generative-ai-tools)
* [Usage of Generative AI Tools](#usage-of-generative-ai-tools)



## What Can I Do?
Expand All @@ -65,7 +66,7 @@ read it carefully.
## How Can I Talk to You?

Discussion often happens in the issues and pull requests.
In addition, we also use Slack and other services to chat and organize project
In addition, we also use Slack and other services to chat and organize project
activities.
See https://www.fatiando.org/contact for links and more information.

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -129,8 +130,8 @@ hesitate to [ask questions](#how-can-i-talk-to-you)):
* Aaron Meurer's [tutorial on the git workflow](http://www.asmeurer.com/git-workflow/)
* [How to Contribute to an Open Source Project on GitHub](https://egghead.io/courses/how-to-contribute-to-an-open-source-project-on-github)

If you're new to working with git, GitHub, and the Unix Shell, we recommend
starting with the [Software Carpentry](https://software-carpentry.org/) lessons,
If you're new to working with git, GitHub, and the Unix Shell, we recommend
starting with the [Software Carpentry](https://software-carpentry.org/) lessons,
which are available in English and Spanish:

* :gb: [Version Control with Git](http://swcarpentry.github.io/git-novice/) / :es: [Control de
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -196,7 +197,7 @@ conda activate ENVIRONMENT_NAME

> **Note:** You'll need to activate the environment every time you start a new terminal.

Most repositories will also have a [`Makefile`](Makefile) that provides commands for
Most repositories will also have a [`Makefile`](Makefile) that provides commands for
installing, running the tests and coverage analysis, running linters, etc.
If you don't want to use `make`, open the `Makefile` and copy the commands you want to
run.
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -325,3 +326,81 @@ Github will show the status of these checks on the pull request.
Try to get them all passing (green).
If you have any trouble, leave a comment in the PR or
[get in touch](#how-can-i-talk-to-you).


## Policy on Usage of Generative AI Tools
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## Policy on Usage of Generative AI Tools
## Usage of Generative AI Tools


One of the Fatiando a Terra project's visions is to spread awareness about the
value of high quality scientific software, and to build knowledge and train
scientists and developers on the best practices for research software
development.

We value the creation process as a goal itself: by drafting, improving,
redesigning, failing, and fixing we develop that knowledge, we improve our
skills, and we can share it with the rest of the community.
For this reason, **we prefer contributions with human-created content**, as in
code, documentation, guides, figures, videos, etc.

Generative AI tools (genAI tools) are being widely used for generating these
types of content. We understand that some contributors might find them useful,
and would like to include them in their workflows and use them when
contributing to open-source projects.
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@leouieda leouieda Apr 28, 2026

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Move this paragraph to the start of this section. Then everything else flows a bit better.

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@leouieda leouieda Apr 28, 2026

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Also might be worth

Suggested change
Generative AI tools (genAI tools) are being widely used for generating these
types of content. We understand that some contributors might find them useful,
and would like to include them in their workflows and use them when
contributing to open-source projects.
Generative AI tools (genAI tools, including chatbots and coding agents) are being widely used for generating these
types of content. We understand that some contributors might find them useful,
and would like to include them in their workflows and use them when
contributing to open-source projects.


Usage of genAI tools in contributions to Fatiando a Terra are not forbidden,
but when being used as an aid in developing code and editing documentation,
**contributors must**:
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@leouieda leouieda Apr 28, 2026

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I'd rephrase this to make it clear that the usage is not forbidden exactly but strongly discouraged.

Suggested change
**contributors must**:
Usage of genAI tools in contributions to Fatiando a Terra is **strongly discouraged** but are not forbidden (see below).
When such tools are used, **contributors must**:


1. ensure that they fully understand the proposed changes and can explain why
they are correct, and
2. communicate that genAI tools have been used in the process.
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1. ensure that they fully understand the proposed changes and can explain why
they are correct, and
2. communicate that genAI tools have been used in the process.
1. Ensure that they **fully understand the proposed changes** and can explain why
they are correct with the aid of a bot.
2. **Declare** that genAI tools have been used in the process (this is covered in our PR template).


Some allowed usages of genAI tools are:

- ✅ Translating text from one language to another.
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- ✅ Translating text from one language to another.
- ✅ Translating text from one language to another. The text should be revised to check that the original meaning was not lost.

- ✅ Reviewing **your code** to improve it or find potential issues.
- ✅ Exploring new design ideas and different implementations.

We forbid the usage of genAI tools in the following cases:

- ❌ Use of AI Agents (bots) to automatically open or comment on Pull Requests,
Issues, and any communication channel of the project.
- ❌ Pasting outputs of genAI content directly into Pull Requests, Issues, and
any communication channel of the project.
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- ❌ Pasting outputs of genAI content directly into Pull Requests, Issues, and
any communication channel of the project.
- ❌ Pasting outputs of genAI content without human revision directly into Pull Requests, Issues, and
any communication channel of the project.

- ❌ Use of genAI tools to circumvent license restrictions. For example,
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@mdtanker mdtanker Apr 21, 2026

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The other points in this section I think are good, but this seems a bit niche, at least it's not something I've heard about. But if it's a common issue, then all good to leave it!

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@santisoler santisoler Apr 21, 2026

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Yes, I know. I wanted to list it still, just to make it explicit in case someone plans to use AI tools to build a reimplementation of a piece of software, particularly old academic software that original researchers had not released under open-source licenses.

The most relevant case of "license laundry" is what happened in chardet: a maintainer overwrote the entire LGPL-licensed code base with an AI generated output and released it under a more permissive license. Leaving a link here to the Issue raising the concern: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327.

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@leouieda leouieda Apr 28, 2026

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I think this is relevant to free software but not really in the context of a project like our right? Unless you think someone could do this as a module in a package?

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@leouieda leouieda Apr 28, 2026

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I'm OK with leaving this in since it's not doing any harm.

reimplementing a GPL-licensed code to release it under a more permissive
license.
- ❌ Use of genAI tools in code reviews in any of our repositories. We highly
value the *peer-review* process as a way for everyone to learn from each
other's expertise.
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@mdtanker mdtanker Apr 21, 2026

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Maybe we could offer an alternative here, and say something like: As an alternative to genAI tools for code review, we recommend code analysis tools such as PyLint or Ruff, which can catch many common code issues.

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@santisoler santisoler Apr 21, 2026

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Sure! We mention Ruff as part of the normal workflow. We can mention it here again.

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@santisoler santisoler Apr 21, 2026

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Now that I reread this item, I think not allowing genAI tools in code reviews is too broad. What I mean is not to ask a chatbot to review a whole PR. But acceptable uses of genAI during a code review process would be to check for grammar, write snippets that would show how the solution is not covering all cases, helping to write additional tests, etc.

I'm open to suggestions to improve this sentences.

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@leouieda leouieda Apr 28, 2026

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How about:

Suggested change
- ❌ Use of genAI tools in code reviews in any of our repositories. We highly
value the *peer-review* process as a way for everyone to learn from each
other's expertise.
- ❌ Use of genAI tools to review entire pull requests in any of our repositories. We highly
value the *peer-review* process as a way for everyone to learn from each
other's expertise. It would be OK to use the tool to check for grammar, for example, but not write the entire review.


Some other uses are not forbidden, but we should pay strong attention.
For example, using genAI tools to:
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I'd include all of these in the forbidden category. Having a PR written by an agent when the person doesn't understand the code is basically item 1 of the list above. Same for documentation. Honestly, I don't want to waste my time reviewing text from an LLM.


- ⚠️ Write code for us. While they can save some *typing time*, one needs to
spend time reviewing the generated output and making sure we fully understand
the proposed solution.
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- ⚠️ Write code for us. While they can save some *typing time*, one needs to
spend time reviewing the generated output and making sure we fully understand
the proposed solution.
- ⚠️ Write code for us. While they can save you some *typing time*, we need to
spend time reviewing the generated output to make sure we fully understand
the proposed solution and then maintain it in the future. Typing time is not the bottleneck in our projects.

- ⚠️ Write code for us that we couldn't write by ourselves. This means that
it's possible that we don't fully understand the generated code.
- ⚠️ Write documentation for us. Documenting code can help identifying design
issues and non-intended uses of the code. Make sure the generated text is
accurate, and describes well how the piece of code should be used.
- ⚠️ Ask for references on papers or books. Double check those references do
exists, and make sure they are relevant for the matter.

Maintainers reserve the right, at their sole discretion, to close Pull
Requests, Issues, and delete comments that incur in unacceptable usage of genAI
tools.
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Maintainers reserve the right, at their sole discretion, to close Pull
Requests, Issues, and delete comments that incur in unacceptable usage of genAI
tools.
The lists above are not exhaustive and serve as examples.
Maintainers reserve the right, at their sole discretion, to close Pull
Requests, Issues, and delete comments that they judge to incur in unacceptable usage of genAI
tools.

Contributors are required to elaborate on how genAI tools were used in the
process of generating new content if a Maintainer requires it.
We may ban and/or report users to GitHub if they repeatedly incur in
unacceptable usage of genAI tools.


### References

This generative AI policy was based on the ones of
[Matplotlib](https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/devel/contribute.html#restrictions-on-generative-ai-usage),
[Scikit-Learn](https://scikit-learn.org/dev/developers/contributing.html#automated-contributions-policy),
[SymPy](https://docs.sympy.org/dev/contributing/ai-generated-code-policy.html),
and comments in [an open discussion in Scientific
Python](https://docs.sympy.org/dev/contributing/ai-generated-code-policy.html).