Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions • Hacker News Board

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#201

Post by Benjamin_Dobell » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 12:37 PM UTC

It's a really tricky one, but I think it's the right call for Godot, but probably not for other projects. I'm the current maintainer of GodotJS (TypeScript bindings for Godot). LLMs can generate genuinely useful solutions for Godot e.g. a functional WebGPU implementation for Godot — https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/6646.

However, as a senior engineer with fairly deep technical knowledge in these areas, I'm now using AI in my own projects. Frankly, before even touching Github, I'm already drowning in code reviews generated by my own use of an LLM!

There are meaningful, generally good PRs waiting for my attention against GodotJS, and other projects I (somewhat) maintain e.g. MoonSharp, C# Lua runtime. It was already extremely difficult to stay on top of PR code reviews for reasonably technical projects. When you're already somewhat burnt out from reviewing LLM code all day, it's so much more exhausting than it used to be.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#202

Post by seanclayton » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 12:41 PM UTC

alberto467 wrote: post #96

seanclayton wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't That makes much more sense now. The inability is completely on you, and you admit it at least.

You can’t understand the difference between functional and non-functional.

> I can't think of a functional reason for a no-AI policy

There are functional reasons for a no-AI policy. It helps the Godot Foundation function to establish a no-AI policy. Do you argue it doesn't help them function?

Do you understand the difference between functional and non-functional?

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#203

Post by mort96 » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 12:42 PM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #200

ivorius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Negative: Submitters just add stylistic markers to make their accounts and output seem human-generated. This is like syntactic sugar: the core content and the size of contributions stay the same, but the style gets quirkier. From my experience reviewing, most contributors never read the policies, especially those making a "quick AI PR". I don't expect the new policy to change this much. > Positive: Submitters act…

They could allow AI PRs, but then have another AI PR reviewer reject them if they do not match the definitions for `to-the-point` `no-bullshit` commits.

And who pays for the (likely significant, and controllable by everyone) tokens such a system would use?

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#204

Post by strangescript » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 12:44 PM UTC

I understand the struggle, but I feel like so many of these projects are going to ban AI contributions right before it starts getting undeniably better than humans.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#205

Post by ahartmetz » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 12:48 PM UTC

TomasBM wrote: post #7

It's a fair policy. Getting those verbose, AI-authored walls of text is very annoying, especially when you're expected to thoroughly review it. It's like a denial-of-service attack on the human mind. I can only imagine how frustrating this can get in open projects that get a lot of contributions. However, I don't think this will discourage AI-based coding at all. In fact, I see two potential outcomes of these policie…

Yes - if I can tell that you used AI (except maybe because of an unnaturally high work rate, or obviously an AI declaration, which is good!), you fail. Keep up the quality and I don't care too much.

I have some misgivings about AI, but I'm not a fundamentalist - you can't be or the machine will squish you, frankly - but please, don't spam me with text or code that could be much shorter. Relevant quotes:

"I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead"

"Brevity is the soul of wit"

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#206

Post by paulddraper » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 12:50 PM UTC

ivorius wrote: post #16

TomasBM wrote: post #7

It's a fair policy. Getting those verbose, AI-authored walls of text is very annoying, especially when you're expected to thoroughly review it. It's like a denial-of-service attack on the human mind. I can only imagine how frustrating this can get in open projects that get a lot of contributions. However, I don't think this will discourage AI-based coding at all. In fact, I see two potential outcomes of these policie…

> - Negative: Submitters just add stylistic markers to make their accounts and output seem human-generated. This is like syntactic sugar: the core content and the size of contributions stay the same, but the style gets quirkier. From my experience reviewing, most contributors never read the policies, especially those making a "quick AI PR". I don't expect the new policy to change this much. > Positive: Submitters act…

> That would be a dream.

“Mission. Fucking. Accomplished.”

https://xkcd.com/810/

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#207

Post by duskdozer » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 12:52 PM UTC

adamddev1 wrote: post #153

orphea wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the assumption that all code (and everything else producing digital artefacts) will be written using AI in the near future, This is what AI providers wanted you to believe in because they have a couple of shovels to sell to you. Once you realize that the assumption is delusional, it's no longer hard to reconcile.

There's this crazy narrative that everyone starts parroting, saying the days of writing code yourself are over, now we have to use agents for everything. No, we don't have to. We can just write code ourselves. (My condolences to people who have jobs where AI is mandated.)

It's only crazy if your goal isn't maximizing token purchases.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#208

Post by yulaow » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 12:52 PM UTC

JodieBenitez wrote: post #186

terminalbraid wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's their project, they can run it how they like. If they lose out on valid contributions that's their loss. People are never entitled to their contributions getting accepted to someone else's code base.

Sure. My point is that they will probably accept "AI" contributions anyway, without knowing it.

These things are done not to block pr done with the help of ai, but to block the ai slops pr, aka those never reviewed, fully vibecoded, and with the submitter that didn't understand anything about the problem or the code, just trusted claude.

The rule is general on purpose to allow the maintainer to freely remove whatever is very evident is just ai slop

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#209

Post by ahartmetz » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 12:54 PM UTC

captainbland wrote: post #38

TomasBM wrote: post #7

It's a fair policy. Getting those verbose, AI-authored walls of text is very annoying, especially when you're expected to thoroughly review it. It's like a denial-of-service attack on the human mind. I can only imagine how frustrating this can get in open projects that get a lot of contributions. However, I don't think this will discourage AI-based coding at all. In fact, I see two potential outcomes of these policie…

> It's like a denial-of-service attack on the human mind. I think this may be an example of deliberate hostile design, attempting to force users to adopt LLM based solutions to then summarise the vast output. Pushing back against AI contributions as such in this context makes sense, especially in software with an existing proven track record of great value delivery like Godot.

AI also works better with concise, focused, high information density text. So AI-spam text hurts both humans and AIs, but humans more so than AIs. It is always a negative, except for the "competition" between (human with) AI and human without AI.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#210

Post by Kiro » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 12:54 PM UTC

terminalbraid wrote: post #116

dude250711 wrote: post #59

If AI is so good, there should be hundreds of new engines far exceeding Godot. Yet all that is being produced is piggy-backing unchecked vibe-slop.

It's also telling with all the comments of "just wait a few months the models are getting so much better" which has been said for years and will continue to be said for years. It's the same with any other scam with tenuous value (see cryptocurrency). At some point you just call it failed.

They have consistently been proven right. The only thing failing has been the plateau claimers. If anything, it has improved much faster than the optimistic predictions.