# AI Usage Policy

The rattler project has strict rules for AI usage:

- **All AI usage in any form must be disclosed.** You must state
  the tool you used (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, Amp) along with
  the extent that the work was AI-assisted.

- **The human-in-the-loop must fully understand all code.** If you
  can't explain what your changes do and how they interact with the
  greater system without the aid of AI tools, do not contribute
  to this project.

- **Issues and discussions can use AI assistance but must have a full
  human-in-the-loop.** This means that any content generated with AI
  must have been reviewed _and edited_ by a human before submission.
  AI is very good at being overly verbose and including noise that
  distracts from the main point. Humans must do their research and
  trim this down.

- **No AI-generated media is allowed (art, images, videos, audio, etc.).**
  Text and code are the only acceptable AI-generated content, per the
  other rules in this policy.


## There are Humans Here

Please remember that rattler is maintained by humans.

Every discussion, issue, and pull request is read and reviewed by
humans (and sometimes machines, too). It is a boundary point at which
people interact with each other and the work done. It is rude and
disrespectful to approach this boundary with low-effort, unqualified
work, since it puts the burden of validation on the maintainer.


## AI is Welcome Here

rattler is written with plenty of AI assistance, and many maintainers embrace
AI tools as a productive tool in their workflow. As a project, we welcome
AI as a tool!

**Our reason for the strict AI policy is not due to an anti-AI stance**, but
because we want to keep the keep the code quality high w.r.t to speed, readability
and composability and ideally we have fun doing so. 
Applying AI injudiciously, in our opinion, always compromises one of these goals. 

We include this section to be transparent about the project's usage about AI
for people who may disagree with it, and to address the misconception,
should one exist, that this policy is anti-AI in nature.
