Files
LocalAI/AGENTS.md
Ettore Di Giacinto 865fd552f5 docs(agents): adopt kernel's AI coding assistants policy
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
2026-04-19 22:50:54 +00:00

3.1 KiB

LocalAI Agent Instructions

This file is the entry point for AI coding assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Codex, Aider, etc.) working on LocalAI. It is an index to detailed topic guides in the .agents/ directory. Read the relevant file(s) for the task at hand — you don't need to load all of them.

Human contributors: see CONTRIBUTING.md for the development workflow.

Policy for AI-Assisted Contributions

LocalAI follows the Linux kernel project's guidelines for AI coding assistants. Before submitting AI-assisted code, read .agents/ai-coding-assistants.md. Key rules:

  • No Signed-off-by from AI. Only the human submitter may sign off on the Developer Certificate of Origin.
  • No Co-Authored-By: <AI> trailers. The human contributor owns the change.
  • Use an Assisted-by: trailer to attribute AI involvement. Format: Assisted-by: AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION [TOOL1] [TOOL2].
  • The human submitter is responsible for reviewing, testing, and understanding every line of generated code.

Topics

File When to read
.agents/ai-coding-assistants.md Policy for AI-assisted contributions — licensing, DCO, attribution
.agents/building-and-testing.md Building the project, running tests, Docker builds for specific platforms
.agents/adding-backends.md Adding a new backend (Python, Go, or C++) — full step-by-step checklist
.agents/coding-style.md Code style, editorconfig, logging, documentation conventions
.agents/llama-cpp-backend.md Working on the llama.cpp backend — architecture, updating, tool call parsing
.agents/vllm-backend.md Working on the vLLM / vLLM-omni backends — native parsers, ChatDelta, CPU build, libnuma packaging, backend hooks
.agents/testing-mcp-apps.md Testing MCP Apps (interactive tool UIs) in the React UI
.agents/api-endpoints-and-auth.md Adding API endpoints, auth middleware, feature permissions, user access control
.agents/debugging-backends.md Debugging runtime backend failures, dependency conflicts, rebuilding backends
.agents/adding-gallery-models.md Adding GGUF models from HuggingFace to the model gallery

Quick Reference

  • Logging: Use github.com/mudler/xlog (same API as slog)
  • Go style: Prefer any over interface{}
  • Comments: Explain why, not what
  • Docs: Update docs/content/ when adding features or changing config
  • Build: Inspect Makefile and .github/workflows/ — ask the user before running long builds
  • UI: The active UI is the React app in core/http/react-ui/. The older Alpine.js/HTML UI in core/http/static/ is pending deprecation — all new UI work goes in the React UI