Godot to ban AI-generated code contributions and tighten contributor policies

• The project will ban substantial AI-generated code contributions.
• Autonomous AI agents and vibe coding will continue to trigger automatic GitHub bans.
• All pull requests must continue to be reviewed and approved by a human before merging.

Game engine Godot has updated its contribution policies to prohibit AI-generated code contributions and introduce stricter rules for new contributors to reduce the growing burden on maintainers reviewing pull requests.

According to Godot, the number of open pull requests has grown significantly over the past several years due to strong community interest, careful review standards and a limited number of qualified reviewers. 

It said the recent increase in AI-generated submissions has further widened the gap by making it easier to produce pull requests without increasing the number of people available to review them.

Godot also said reviewing AI-generated contributions has become demoralising because maintainers no longer feel they are helping mentor future contributors through the review process.

Policy changes

Under the updated rules, new contributors with three or fewer merged pull requests will need explicit permission from maintainers before submitting new features or significant refactoring work. New contributors must first build trust by working on bug fixes and documentation.

Moreover, Godot will also prohibit the use of autonomous AI agents and vibe coding, with violations continuing to result in an automatic ban from its GitHub repository. 

Substantial AI-generated code will not be accepted, contributors must disclose any AI-assisted code in pull request discussions and AI-generated text is prohibited in human-to-human communication as all pull requests must continue to receive human review before being merged.

“It is time for us to recognise that these problems aren’t going away and therefore we need to take steps to reduce the burden on maintainers while ensuring we still have a pipeline to mentor new contributors to become future maintainers," said Godot in a post.