Require attribution for content posted on a user's behalf - #8792
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Damyan Pepper (damyanp) wants to merge 2 commits into
Open
Require attribution for content posted on a user's behalf#8792Damyan Pepper (damyanp) wants to merge 2 commits into
Damyan Pepper (damyanp) wants to merge 2 commits into
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Agents acting through a user's GitHub account can open pull requests, write descriptions, and reply in review threads that appear, to any reader, to have been written by that user. Commits already carry a Co-authored-by trailer, but content posted through the API does not, so authorship is misrepresented by default. Add a section to the repository instructions requiring an "_Assisted by GitHub Copilot._" trailer on pull request descriptions, issue bodies, review comments and replies, pull request and issue comments, and discussion posts. Bots that post under their own identity, such as copilot-pull-request-reviewer[bot], are already attributed and are explicitly out of scope. Co-authored-by: Copilot App <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com> Copilot-Session: e8b5337d-516d-45c2-aa9d-2efb79ebaf86
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Pull request overview
Adds attribution guidance for AI-assisted GitHub content posted through contributor accounts.
Changes:
- Defines affected content and bot/commit exclusions.
- Requires a standardized attribution trailer.
- Covers attribution when editing existing content.
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The section claimed to apply to any agent acting through a user's account, but mandated a trailer naming GitHub Copilot specifically. An agent from another vendor following it would have replaced one authorship misrepresentation with another. Parameterize the trailer as "_Assisted by <agent>._", keep "_Assisted by GitHub Copilot._" as the example, and give "_Assisted by an AI agent._" as the fallback when no product name applies. Also make the scope wording vendor-neutral. Co-authored-by: Copilot App <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com> Copilot-Session: e8b5337d-516d-45c2-aa9d-2efb79ebaf86
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Adds a section to
.github/copilot-instructions.mdrequiring that AI-authored content posted through a user's GitHub account is identified as such.Motivation
Agents acting through a contributor's account — the Copilot CLI, the Copilot app, the Copilot cloud agent — can open pull requests, write descriptions, and reply in review threads. All of that appears under the contributor's name, with nothing to distinguish it from text they wrote themselves.
Commits are already handled: the
Co-authored-bytrailer records the assistance. Content posted through the API has no equivalent, so authorship is misrepresented by default rather than by mistake.This came up because it happened. While working on another pull request in this repository, an agent posted a review thread reply under a maintainer's identity with no indication it was AI-authored.
The rule
Add
_Assisted by GitHub Copilot._as the last line of the body, for:With these qualifications:
copilot-pull-request-reviewer[bot]and similar are already attributed by their username; adding a trailer would be noise.Co-authored-by.Notes for reviewers
This is a repository-wide policy about how contributors' accounts are represented, so it is deliberately separate from #8788, which is a code review tuning change. It is worth discussing on its own terms.
Two things reviewers may want to weigh in on: whether
_Assisted by GitHub Copilot._is the right wording, and whether the policy belongs in.github/copilot-instructions.mdor in a rootAGENTS.md, which this repository does not currently have. Repository custom instructions are read by agents working in the repository, so this location does take effect, butAGENTS.mdmay be the more discoverable home for guidance aimed at humans as well.No release note: repository tooling, with no user-visible compiler behavior change.
Assisted by GitHub Copilot.