In brief

System76, which makes the Linux system Pop!_OS and its COSMIC desktop, changed its contribution rules on September 30. Every pull request must now confirm it contains no content generated by an LLM, “including code, comments, and descriptions”. Pull requests without the completed checklist will be closed.

New to this? Read it in simple words
  • The makers of the Linux system Pop!_OS banned AI-written contributions.
  • The ban covers code, comments, descriptions and bug reports.
  • Reviewers were getting many AI-made submissions they rarely accepted.
  • Contributors must tick a box; no tool checks it.
Words to know
Pull request
A proposed change to a project’s code, which others review.
LLM
A large language model, the kind of AI behind chatbots and coding tools.
Open source
Software whose code anyone may read, change and share.

The new rule

System76’s Jeremy Soller merged the change on September 30. The checklist now reads: “I have not included any LLM (also known as AI) generated content in this PR, including code, comments, and descriptions.”

The project’s contributing guide adds that LLM content “may not be contributed in issues or PRs to Pop!_OS projects”. So bug reports are covered too.

The change came with a script to update every repository. We found the new line in 37 pop-os repositories on GitHub, including the main COSMIC apps.

Sources12

RULE CHECK 01
What the new checklist bans.

From System76’s pull request template and contributing guide on GitHub, September 30 and October 1.

Why, and the fine print

AI tools “have allowed many first-time contributors to make their mark on COSMIC, but their entries were unplanned and rarely accepted,” Soller said, as quoted by XDA Developers.

Linuxiac reports the aim is to keep reviews manageable for the COSMIC team.

A first version of the guide said AI could still be used for research and testing. That sentence was removed on October 1. One exception remains: apps submitted to COSMIC’s Flatpak store may contain AI code of their own.

Sources234

What to keep in mind

The rule works by honour: contributors tick a box, and no tool checks the code.

XDA places it among other open-source projects struggling with a rise in AI-made submissions. arXiv this week capped submissions for a similar reason.

Pop!_OS is a popular Linux system from System76, a US computer maker. COSMIC is its own desktop, written in Rust.

Sources34

Sources

Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.

  1. 1
    Primary source · September 30, 2026Disallow LLM generation in pull requests (pull request #3911) GitHub (pop-os/cosmic-epoch)
  2. 2
    Primary source · October 1, 2026CONTRIBUTING.md: AI Contributions GitHub (pop-os/pop)
  3. 3
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How we checked this story

We read the pull request, the templates and the contributing guide on GitHub, including the October 1 edit, and compared XDA Developers and Linuxiac. Some reports say non-generative AI tools are still allowed; the guide no longer says so, so we report the current text. Soller’s reasoning comes from XDA; we did not find the original post. Neowin also covered it but blocked our reader.