Hi Martijn, Thanks for kicking off this discussion. I've been thinking along similar lines recently, so you have a +1 from me on this proposal.
I also have a suggestion regarding activity on the users' mailing list. Could we consider introducing an AI agent to help answer users' questions? I've noticed that many inquiries on user@flink currently go unanswered, yet most of them could be effectively addressed by an agent. Best, Leonard > 2026 3月 13 05:03，Martijn Visser <[email protected]> 写道： > > Hi all, > > I'd like to start a discussion about how the Flink community should handle > AI-assisted contributions and how we can make the Flink codebase more > accessible to AI tooling. > > The ASF has published guidance on generative AI tooling [1], and several > Apache projects have already adopted project-specific guidelines on top of > that. I think Flink should too. > > The most comprehensive example I've seen is Apache Airflow. They've added > an AGENTS.md [2] with instructions for AI coding agents, including PR > templates with an AI disclosure checkbox, a self-review checklist, and the > Generated-by: commit message token that the ASF guidance recommends. Apache > Iceberg recently adopted AI contribution guidelines [3] focused on > contributor accountability: you must be able to debug, explain, and own the > changes. Other projects like Paimon [4], Mahout [5], and Ozone [6] have > adopted similar policies. > > I'd like to propose the following for Flink: > > 1. Adopt contribution guidelines for AI-assisted PRs. Contributors must > disclose when AI tooling was used (using Generated-by: <Tool Name and > Version> in the commit message), and must be able to explain and take > ownership of all changes. AI-generated code is held to the same review > standards as human-written code. > 2. Add AGENTS.md files to the Flink repository. AGENTS.md [7] is a > convention for giving AI coding agents project-specific context. It can > contain information like build instructions, test commands, coding > conventions, commit message format. I think we should add one at the root > of apache/flink. > 3. Add module-level context for AI tooling. This is where I think we can > take a step forward. Each Flink module (e.g. flink-streaming-java, > flink-table-planner, flink-clients) would benefit from its own AGENTS.md > explaining the module's role, key abstractions, testing patterns, and > common pitfalls. This also serves as architectural documentation that helps > human contributors. > > I'm looking forward to hearing what others think about this. > > Best regards, > > Martijn > > [1] https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html > [2] https://github.com/apache/airflow/blob/main/AGENTS.md > [3] > https://iceberg.apache.org/contribute/#guidelines-for-ai-assisted-contributions > [4] > https://github.com/apache/paimon/blob/master/.github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md?plain=1#L22 > [5] > https://github.com/apache/mahout/blob/main/docs/community/pr-policy-and-review-guidelines.md > [6] > https://github.com/apache/ozone-site/blob/master/src/pages/release-notes/2.0.0.md?plain=1#L408 > [7] https://agents.md/
