docs: add clause on 100% autonomous contributions to CONTRIBUTING.md #1397
Description
With 100% autonomous contributions now being a thing, it may be a good idea to add a clause to our pull request review process stating that we will not be accepting PRs from user accounts where no human is involved (that is to say: OpenClaw agents, and the likes of it) - or more specifically, where the agent is totally unaccountable and the human who owns their account will not take accountability for the agent's PRs.
Part of the point of open source is not just "making cool, free libraries" - it's also about community and knowing that you personally helped someone else through your work (and that in the future, if you use this library, they might be able to help you). Autonomous contributions that have zero accountability and zero real humans that a PR can be linked back to do not meaningfully grow the community, and may instead place additional burden on maintainers who must review, validate, and potentially debug code that no accountable contributor stands behind.
There are also practical concerns around maintenance and long-term ownership. When a contribution introduces regressions, requires clarification, or needs follow-up work, maintainers typically rely on being able to engage with the original author. If a PR originates from a fully autonomous agent with no clear human responsibility, this breaks an important feedback loop that open source projects depend on.
This is not meant to discourage the use of AI-assisted development. Tools that help contributors write, review, or improve code under human supervision are already a normal part of many workflows. Rather, the distinction here is accountability: contributions should have a clearly identifiable human who understands the changes being submitted and is willing to take responsibility for their correctness, maintenance, and discussion.
A possible policy could be:
- Pull requests must have a clearly accountable human author or sponsor.
- Contributors submitting AI- or agent-generated code must be able to explain and defend the changes.
- Fully autonomous submissions with no responsible human party may be declined (ie, autonomous agents must be able to reference who their human is and their human must also declare who their bot is).
The goal of such a clause would not be to gatekeep contributions, but to preserve the collaborative and accountable nature of the project, maintain code quality, and ensure that contributions continue to strengthen the community around the project.
Discussion's open if anyone has any questions or queries. I'll be leaving this open for around about a week so that we can get feedback from anyone who has any queries/questions and then execute the ticket.