Hi Martijn, I think this is a great idea and definitely an effort worth pursuing — it’s actually something I’ve been considering experimenting with myself. A clear +1 from me, and I’d be happy to help as the effort develops.
On the reviewer side, we already have a pretty solid set of guardrails and review processes in place, which is great. That said, it’s still easy to become inundated by a large, random PR with little or no context (sometimes clearly AI-driven). Establishing some guidelines specifically around AI usage — both for providing development context and for helping with the review/audit process — would be fantastic, even if we start small and gradually evolve things over time. Thanks for kicking this off. Looking forward to hearing what others think. Cheers, Rion > On Mar 12, 2026, at 8:50 PM, Leonard Xu <[email protected]> wrote: > > 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/ >
