Mastodawn

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@nedbat/116133445557306539

I got Ned's point, but I don’t think we can treat Claude (or similar tools) at the same level as a person.

We've never added tools (e.g. isort, Black, Ruff, ...) as co-authors of commits, even when they generated 100% of a commit.

Listing Claude as a co-author of a commit put it the same level as a person, but it's a tool.

The author of a commit is a person responsible for the code they submit, without shifting that responsibility to the tool, or worse, to the project maintainers.

#FOSS #AI

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Matthias K Feb 26

@paulox I'm not sure I agree with this take. Disclosing contributions can make sense when debugging: I would tend to be more critical of these commits when bisecting failures later.

That doesn't make sense necessarily since humans make mistakes as well. Still, it's a data point, and simply stripping the attribution doesn't improve the code in the commit at all.

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Paolo Melchiorre

Thanks @matthiask this is a helpful perspective.

I’d keep `Co-authored-by` for people who actually contributed and share responsibility for the code. If it’s useful, context can live in the commit message instead e.g. noting AI assistance (Claude), or tools like Ruff, Black, or PyUpgrade that shaped or generated parts of the diff.

Claude may be more advanced, but it’s still a tool. The developer submitting the commit remains responsible, and that’s what authorship should reflect.