Proposal for SciPy to adopt the same AI policy as SymPy

j-bowhay · January 30, 2026, 10:31am

Hi all,

I would like to propose that SciPy adopts the same AI policy, with some light editing to remove irreverent text, as SymPy ( AI Generated Code and Communication Policy - SymPy 1.15.0.dev documentation ). Why am I proposing this:

The volume of AI generated pull requests is only increasing and it would be good to have a written policy we can point to.
The previous thread did not reach an actionable conclusion. A policy on generative AI assisted contributions
I think SymPy’s policy is pragmatic and covers most of the concerns raise in the other thread.
It would allow us to adopt a policy without spending a bunch of time and effort bike-shedding - perfect is the enemy of good!

Let me know what you think!

Regards,

Jake

ilayn · January 30, 2026, 11:00am

Policy-wise I think @matthew-brett and others can shape up our text as SymPy text is a little bit too terse or concise. I will leave that discussion to others.

What I think we urgently need is AGENTS.txt and CLAUDE.md pointing to that text file so that they don’t even make unnecessary PRs in the first place. An example is they don’t fix things under subprojects and also they leave certain parts alone. When it is a documentation PR they have the right commit messages etc.

rgommers · January 30, 2026, 11:02am

Thanks @j-bowhay. I like your proposal, the SymPy policy seems to be very sensible overall, and places responsibility where it belongs.

And I agree it’s time to have something in place - better than nothing. For two reasons:

We seem to be inconvenienced by it a lot more recently, with an increasing number of PRs - including the problematic low-quality ones.
The tools have improved to be much more useful, hence update will further grow. 6-12 months ago, AI coding tools were very hit and miss, and there wasn’t much benefit to using them on a project of SciPy’s complexity. Something seems to have changed there recently, they crossed a threshold where they’re mostly correct at least in easy to medium complexity tasks. Still needs a human to verify everything, but it can now pretty clearly be a productivity booster.

h-vetinari · January 30, 2026, 11:02am

Another recent example of a big project adopting such a policy: [RFC] LLVM AI tool policy: human in the loop - LLVM Project - LLVM Discussion Forums

tupui · January 30, 2026, 11:14am

I like the idea of adding a AGENT.txt and CLAUDE.md

+100 on a policy and SymPy ones is pragmatic and concise.

rgommers · January 30, 2026, 11:28am

Thanks for sharing the LLVM policy @h-vetinari, it was useful to read. Let me post the link to the actual policy as published rather than the RFC thread for it: LLVM AI Tool Use Policy — LLVM 23.0.0git documentation .

rgommers · January 30, 2026, 11:32am

Can you start a separate thread on this @ilayn ? There’s nontrivial design complexity there (what files, how to accommodate different tools, user preferences for build/test commands, etc.), and it’s related to but separate from having an AI policy.

ilayn · January 30, 2026, 12:48pm

Done. See

nickodell · January 31, 2026, 9:31pm

I was just thinking about this today, since I wanted to point a new contributor to some kind of policy on how to use LLMs. Thanks for restarting this discussion.

oscarbenjamin · February 1, 2026, 1:56am

We don’t have a lot experience yet with this policy in SymPy since it was only approved maybe a week ago. As well as the policy a note was added to the PR template linking though to the policy:

github.com/sympy/sympy

.github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md?plain=1

cb82b006a


      
          #### AI Generation Disclosure
          
          <!-- If this pull request includes AI-generated code or text, please disclose
          the tool used and specify which lines were generated. Disclosure is not
          required for minor assistive tasks, such as spell-checking or code reviewing,
          in primarily human-authored work. Otherwise, leave this area blank. Read our
          Policy on AI Generated Code and Communication at
          https://docs.sympy.org/dev/contributing/ai-generated-code-policy.html. -->

Since that was added most PRs have had some kind of statement there like “I used AI to review the code” or something. I have not seen anyone claiming that they did not use AI at all when the code was all clearly AI generated. Underclaiming AI usage seems common though e.g. in this PR:

https://github.com/sympy/sympy/pull/29048

It says:

# AI Generation Disclosure
This PR was authored by a human. AI tools were used only for high-level discussion and review guidance; all code changes and tests were written and reviewed manually.

(I think an AI wrote the AI disclosure!)

When I actually looked at the code it was clear that the test code was written by an AI. The PR would have been fine if the test code was improved but when I pointed out that it was obviously AI generated test code the author then deleted their GitHub account. Maybe that wasn’t the best outcome but my hope is that other people will see things like that and we will eventually get to a state where people are honest about their use of AI. I’m not sure that anything could be improved in the policy itself in this respect.

j-bowhay · February 1, 2026, 8:10am

Interesting, thanks. One of my motivations for wanting to adopt this is to be able to point to a policy when closing PRs rather than having to write ad hoc explanations. Whilst it would be nice if people actually read and followed it, I still think it would be useful regardless.