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doc: refactor the AI guidelines - #65269

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joyeecheung:consolidate-ai-guidelines
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doc: refactor the AI guidelines#65269
joyeecheung wants to merge 2 commits into
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joyeecheung:consolidate-ai-guidelines

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@joyeecheung joyeecheung commented Aug 13, 2026

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The earlier version of the document contains duplications and has become logically disconnected after iteration. This patch wordsmiths it a bit to make it more coherent:

  • Merge policy points that have been repeated in the guidelines into the opening policy (e.g. as pointed out in doc: create ai-guidelines and include to CONTRIBUTING #62105 (comment))
  • Remove redundant taglines.
  • Reword the paragraphs so that they appear more logical:
    -> decision making and responsibility is human-only
    -> AI assistance is not prohibited
    -> disclosure and licensing
    -> verification and review requirement
    -> other off limits items (automation, good first issues)
  • Reword the guidelines to contextualize the suggestions with the use of AI instead of being generic.
  • Change the tone of the document to be more in line with other documents we have (e.g. avoid being too imperative or calling out "you" constantly)

The earlier version of the document contains duplications and
has become logically disconnected after iteration. This patch
wordsmiths it a bit to make it more coherent:

- Merge policy points that have been repeated in the guidelines
  into the opening policy.
- Remove redundant taglines.
- Reword the paragraphs so that they appear more logical:
  -> decision making and accountability is human-only
  -> AI assistance is not prohibited
  -> disclosure and licensing
  -> verification and review requirement
  -> other off limits items (automation, good first issues)
- Reword the guidelines to contextualize the suggestions with
  the use of AI instead of being generic.
- Change the tone of the document to be more in line with other
  documents we have (e.g. avoid being too imperative or calling
  out "you" constantly)

Signed-off-by: Joyee Cheung <joyeec9h3@gmail.com>
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Review requested:

  • @nodejs/tsc

@nodejs-github-bot nodejs-github-bot added the doc Issues and PRs related to the documentations. label Aug 13, 2026
every change they propose. The answer to "Why is X an improvement?" can
never be "I'm not sure. The AI did it."
The Node.js project does not prohibit the use of AI tools in contributions, but
when the contribution is generated with AI, the contributor must disclose the use

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I think in the current text does not require disclosure and we did not expect mandatory disclosure.

And I think it is worth to keep "disclosure does not serve as a disclaimer of responsibility".

@joyeecheung joyeecheung Aug 13, 2026

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The previous wording was:

If AI tools assisted in generating a contribution, acknowledge that honestly.

The new wording is:

when the contribution is generated with AI, the contributor must disclose the use of such tools

IMO they are equivalent only that the first version (unnecessarily) assumes dishonesty and is rather imperative.

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disclosure does not serve as a disclaimer of responsibility

hmm yeah I was thinking maybe "Contributors must take full responsibility for their actions in the Node.js project" + the detailed the guidelines below is enough to cover, repeating responsibility multiple times feels rather repetitive..

@joyeecheung joyeecheung Aug 13, 2026

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Inserted

Disclosure about the use of AI does not serve as a disclaimer of this responsibility.

into the "must understand and explain" section, which I think is where it would've belonged in the first place.

I think the disclosure requirement was the consensus of the last PR, at least that was what If AI tools assisted in generating a contribution, acknowledge that honestly is supposed to mean. If we want to soften the wording to make disclosure non-mandatory, I think we need to look for new consensus. At least from my interpretation, when the code is generated by AI, disclosure is expected. If it's pure assistance but not generation, this is not necessary (otherwise every Google user needs to disclose the use of Gemini overview which can't be turned off..)

@joyeecheung
joyeecheung force-pushed the consolidate-ai-guidelines branch from 4b185d4 to 4783c93 Compare August 13, 2026 22:16
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