System76's COSMIC Project Bans AI-Generated Code

System76 has updated the pull request template for its COSMIC project, adding a mandatory checklist. Contributors must confirm their submissions contain no AI-generated code, comments, or descriptions, or they can't submit at all.

COSMIC is a Linux desktop environment built in Rust by System76. The team says AI lacks the full context needed to understand how big projects fit together, so it often writes code that looks fine but is hard to maintain, making reviews take much longer.

The cosmic-flatpak repo is the only one exempt from the 'No LLM contributions' rule. The Ladybird browser project has set similar limits. The real issue is that AI code still needs human maintainers to understand, review, test, and maintain it long term.