The AI-assistant policy says an AI agent must never add a Signed-off-by
trailer, because only a human can certify the DCO. That is right for the
case it was written for: an assistant helping a contributor who then
signs off themselves.
It does not fit automation a maintainer runs. Those pull requests have no
human submitter, so nothing ever signs and the DCO check blocks them
permanently. Sixty-one open pull requests from the maintenance bot are in
exactly that state, every one of them correctly following the documented
rule.
Carve out the case: automation a maintainer operates signs off with that
maintainer's identity. The maintainer certifies the DCO, as they do for a
commit they typed by hand, because they configured the automation, own
its output, and take responsibility on merge. The Assisted-by trailer
still records that a model wrote the code, so provenance is unchanged.
Keep the exception narrow. An assistant helping an outside contributor
still must not sign off, and a bot must not sign for anyone but its
operator, including on a contributor's branch it pushes to.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
Co-authored-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
Align LocalAI with the Linux kernel project's policy for AI-assisted
contributions (https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html).
- Add .agents/ai-coding-assistants.md with the full policy adapted to
LocalAI's MIT license: no Signed-off-by or Co-Authored-By from AI,
attribute AI involvement via an Assisted-by: trailer, human submitter
owns the contribution.
- Surface the rules at the entry points: AGENTS.md (and its CLAUDE.md
symlink) and CONTRIBUTING.md.
- Publish a user-facing reference page at
docs/content/reference/ai-coding-assistants.md and link it from the
references index.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7
