- Core Philosophy: "The Pilot is Human" MidnightBSD is a community-driven desktop operating system. While we acknowledge that AI tools (LLMs, Copilots, etc.) can accelerate development, the contributor remains 100% responsible for the correctness, security, and performance of their submission.
"The AI wrote it" is never an acceptable defense for broken code.
- Technical Requirements by Language
C / C++ - Restricted - AI often ignores manual memory management or introduces buffer overflows. Every line must be manually audited for malloc/free symmetry and bounds checking.
Assembly - Prohibited - We do not accept AI-generated Assembly. AI lacks the nuanced understanding of specific CPU architectures and side-channel mitigations required for MidnightBSD.
Shell (sh/mksh) - Permitted - High utility for boilerplate, but must be checked for POSIX compliance. Avoid "Bash-isms".
Documentation - Encouraged - Great for proofreading and formatting, provided technical accuracy is maintained.
- The "Midnight Test" for Contributions
Before submitting a Pull Request containing AI-assisted code, you must ensure it meets these three criteria:
Traceability: You must be able to explain exactly how the code interacts with the kernel or userland.
No License Contamination: You warrant that the code does not contain snippets of GPL, proprietary, or otherwise "regurgitated" code that violates the BSD 2-Clause License.
No Blind Commits: Do not copy-paste blocks of code that you do not fully understand. If you cannot debug it without the AI's help, do not submit it.
- Submission Protocol
To maintain transparency in our git history, please follow these conventions:
Commit Trailers If AI assisted in the creation of a commit, add the following tag to the end of your commit message:
AI-Assisted-by: [Tool Name] (e.g., AI-Assisted-by: Claude 3.7)
Pull Request Checklist Every PR must check the following:
[ ] I have manually reviewed every line of AI-generated code for security flaws.
[ ] The code adheres to the MidnightBSD style guide (style(9)).
[ ] No proprietary or copy-left code was introduced via the AI tool.
- Enforcement
The MidnightBSD maintainers reserve the right to:
Reject any PR that appears to be "low-effort AI spam."
Request a Rewrite if the code structure is nonsensical or overly verbose (common with AI).
Revert any commits found to have introduced vulnerabilities due to unverified AI output.