[HN Gopher] Jellyfin LLM/"AI" Development Policy
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Jellyfin LLM/"AI" Development Policy
Author : mmoogle
Score : 85 points
Date : 2026-01-28 21:42 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jellyfin.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (jellyfin.org)
| hamdingers wrote:
| > LLM output is expressly prohibited for any direct communication
|
| I would like to see this more. As a heavy user of LLMs I still
| write 100% of my own communication. Do not send me something an
| LLM wrote, if I wanted to read LLM outputs, I would ask an LLM.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Yeah I use LLMs to show me how to shorten my emails because I
| can type for days. It helps a lot for when I feel like I just
| need a short concise email but I still write it all myself.
| gonzalohm wrote:
| Same can go for LLM code. I don't want to review your code if
| it was written by an LLM
|
| I only use LLM to write text/communication because that's the
| part I don't like about my work
| adastra22 wrote:
| I'm glad they have a carve out for using LLMs to translate to,
| or fix up English communications. LLMs are a great
| accessibility tool that is making open source development truly
| global. Translation and grammar fix up is something LLMs are
| very, very good at!
|
| But that is translation, not "please generate a pull request
| message for these changes."
| Gigachad wrote:
| Better to use Google Translate for this than ChatGPT. Either
| ChatGPT massively changes the text and slopifies it, or
| people are lying about using it for translation only because
| the outputs are horrendous. Google Translate won't fluff out
| the output with garbage or reformat everything with emoji.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| "Translate this from X to X, don't change any meaning or
| anything else, only translate the text with idiomatic usage
| in target language: X"
|
| Using Google Translate probably means you're using a
| language model in the end anyways behind the scenes.
| Initially, the Transformer was researched and published as
| an improvement for machine translation, which eventually
| led to LLMs. Using them for translation is pretty much
| exactly what they excel at :)
| mort96 wrote:
| Why would you want to use a chat bot to translate? Either you
| know the source and destination language, in which case
| you'll almost certainly do a better job (certainly a more
| trustworthy job), or you don't, in which case you shouldn't
| be handling translations for that language anyway.
|
| Same with grammar fixes. If you don't know the language, why
| are you submitting grammar changes??
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| No, I think GP means grammar fixes to your own
| communication. For example if I don't speak Japanese very
| well and I want to write to you in Japanese, I might write
| you a message in Japanese, then ask an LLM to fix up _my_
| grammar and check my writing to make sure I 'm not sounding
| like a complete idiot.
| mort96 wrote:
| I have read a lot of bad grammar from people who aren't
| very good at the language but are trying their best. It's
| fine. Just try to express yourself clearly and we figure
| it out.
|
| I have read text where people who aren't very good at the
| language try to "fix it up" by feeding it through a chat
| bot. It's horrible. It's incredibly obvious that they
| didn't write the text, the tone is totally off, it's full
| of obnoxious ChatGPT-isms, etc.
|
| Just do your best. It's fine. Don't subject your
| collaborators to shitty chat bot output.
| denkmoon wrote:
| For translating communications like "Here is my PR, it does
| x, can you please review it", not localisation of the app.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| "I just used it to clean up my writing" seems to be the usual
| excuse when someone has generated the entire thing and copy
| pasted it in. No one believes it and it's blatantly obvious
| every time someone does this.
| Kerrick wrote:
| Relevant: https://noslopgrenade.com
| darkwater wrote:
| Seems perfectly legit and hopefully it will help creating new
| contributors that learn and understand what the AI helped them
| generate.
| lifetimerubyist wrote:
| > Violating this rule will result in closure/deletion of the
| offending item(s).
|
| Should just be an instant perma-ban (along with closure,
| obviously).
| Hamuko wrote:
| Seems a bit disproportionate. I'd say that's more of a "repeat
| offender" type of solution.
| lifetimerubyist wrote:
| Whats disproportionate is the mountains of slop out there and
| the amount of people think they can just sling slop for cheap
| online cred.
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| Once might just be a script kiddie not knowing any better.
| More than once is a script kiddie refusing to know any
| better.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Submitting a pure slop PR and description is a very high
| level offense that is obviously not acceptable.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I think at some point we will need a "PEP-8" for LLM / AI code
| contributions document that is universally reusable and adoptable
| per project, call it an "Agent Policy" or what have you, that any
| agent worth its Salt should read before touching a codebase and
| warn the user that their contributions might not be accepted or
| what have you, depending on project policy, just like we have
| GPL, BSD, MIT, etc it would probably make sense to have it,
| especially for those of us who are respectful to a projects needs
| and wishes. I think there's definitely room for sane LLM code /
| vibe coded code, but you have to put in a little work to validate
| your changes, run every test, ensure that you understand the
| output and implications, not just shove a PR at the devs and hope
| they accept it.
|
| A lot of the time open source PRs are very strategic pieces of
| code that do not introduce regressions, an LLM does not
| necessarily know or care, and someone vibe coding might not know
| the projects expectations. I guess instead of / aside from a Code
| of Conduct, we need a sort of "Expectation of Code" type of
| document that covers the projects expectations.
| ChristianJacobs wrote:
| This seems fair, tbh. And I fully agree on the policy for
| issues/discussions/PRs.
|
| I know there will probably be a whole host of people from non-
| English-speaking countries who will complain that they are only
| using AI to translate because English is not their first (or
| maybe even second) language. To those I will just say: I would
| much rather read your non-native English, knowing you put thought
| and care into what you wrote, rather than reading an AIs (poor)
| interpretation of what you hoped to convey.
| nabbed wrote:
| Although: "An exception will be made for LLM-assisted
| translations if you are having trouble accurately conveying
| your intent in English."
| ChristianJacobs wrote:
| I am quite obviously blind, but I still stand by my
| sentiment. I would rather have a "bad" but honest PR body
| than a machine translated one where the author isn't sure
| about what it says. How will you know if what it says is what
| you meant?
| fragmede wrote:
| Tu Ran Chu Xian Yi Da Duan Wai Wen Wen Zi Hui Rang Hen Duo
| Ren Gan Dao Fan Gan . Ji Shi Bu Neng Bai Fen Zhi Bai Que
| Ding Fan Yi Zhun Que ,Da Duo Shu Shi Yong Zhe Reng Ran Geng
| Qing Xiang Yu Jiang Qi Fan Yi Cheng Ying Yu .
| adastra22 wrote:
| There is a carve out exception for this in the doc.
| bjackman wrote:
| I think the spirit of the policy also allows you to write your
| own words in your own language and have an AI translate it.
|
| (But also, for a majority of people old fashioned Google
| Translate works great).
|
| (Edit: it's actually a explicit carveout)
| transcriptase wrote:
| I suspect the vast number of individuals in developing countries
| currently spamming LLM commits to every open source project on
| earth, and often speak neither the project or programming
| language are not going to pay much attention to this policy. It's
| become a numbers game of automation blasting "contributions" at
| projects with name recognition and hoping you sneak one in for
| your resume/portfolio.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Policy is not put in place to _prevent_ anything. Policy is put
| in place so that you have a sign to point at while you lock a
| PR thread.
| FanaHOVA wrote:
| People can write horrible PRs manually just as well as they do
| with AI (see Hacktoberfest drama, etc).
|
| "LLM Code Contributions to Official Projects" would read exactly
| the same if it just said "Code Contributions to Official
| Projects": Write concise PRs, test your code, explain your
| changes and handle review feedback. None of this is different
| whether the code is written manually or with an LLM. Just looks
| like a long virtue signaling post.
| getmoheb wrote:
| Virtue signaling? That seems like an uncharitable reading.
|
| The point, and the problem, is volume. Doing it manually has
| always imposed a de facto volume limit which LLMs have
| effectively removed. Which I understand to be the problem these
| types of posts and policies are designed to address.
| mort96 wrote:
| A large enough difference in degree becomes a difference in
| kind. Chat bots have vastly inflated the amount of shitty PRs,
| to the degree that it needs different solutions to manage.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| These seem fair, but it's the type of framework that really only
| catches egregious cases -- people using the tools appropriately
| will likely slip through undetected.
| anavid7 wrote:
| > LLM/"AI"
|
| love the "AI" in quotes
| wmf wrote:
| It's incongruous to me to put "AI" in scare quotes while
| allowing it to be used. It is intelligent.
| antirez wrote:
| Good AI policies (like this one) can be spotted since the TLDR is
| "Don't submit shitty code". As such, good AI policies should be
| replaced by "Contribution policies" that says "Don't submit
| shitty code".
| darkwater wrote:
| I think the gist and the "virality" of this policy is:
|
| 1) we accept good quality LLM code
|
| 2) we DO NOT accept LLM generated human interaction, including
| PR explanation
|
| 3) your PR must explain well enough the change in the
| description
|
| Which summed together are far more than "no shitty code". It's
| rather no shitty code that YOU understand
| anthonypasq wrote:
| > 1) we accept good quality LLM code
|
| there is no such thing as LLM code. code is code, the same
| standards have always applied no matter who or what wrote it.
| if you paid an indian guy to type out the PR for you 10 years
| ago, but it was submitted under your name, its still your
| responsibility.
| mort96 wrote:
| I don't agree at all. There's a huge difference between
| "someone wrote this code and at least understands the
| intention and the problem it's trying to solve" and "the
| chat bot just generated this code, nobody understands what
| the intention is". I'm comfortable having a conversation
| with a human about code they wrote. It's pointless to have
| a conversation with a human about code they didn't write
| and don't understand.
|
| The quality of "does the submitter understand the code" is
| not reflected in the text of the diff itself, yet is
| extremely important for good contributions.
| JaggedJax wrote:
| I'm not sure when this policy was introduced, but fairly recently
| Jellyfin released a pretty major update that introduced a lot of
| bugs and performance issues. I've been watching their issue
| tracker as they work through them and have noticed it's flooded
| with LLM generated PRs and obviously LLM generated PR
| comments/descriptions/replies. A lot of the LLM generated PRs are
| a mishmash of 2-8 different issues all jumbled into a single PR.
|
| I can see how frustrating it is to wade through those and they
| are distracting and taking time away from them actually getting
| things fixed up.
| bjackman wrote:
| I have lately taken to this approach when I raise bugs:
|
| 1. Fully human-written explanation of the issue with all the
| info I can add
|
| 2. As an attachment to the bug (not a PR), explicitly noted as
| such, an AI slop fix and a note that it makes my symptom go
| away.
|
| I've been on the receiving end of one bug report in this format
| and I thought it was pretty helpful. Even though the AI fix was
| garbage, the fact that the patch made the bug go away was
| useful signal.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The open for anyone PR model might be at risk now. How can
| maintainers be expected to review unlimited slop coming in. I
| can see a lot of open source just giving up on allowing
| community contribution. Or maybe only allowing trusted members
| to contribute after they have demonstrated more than passing
| interest in the project.
| h4kunamata wrote:
| >LLM output is expressly prohibited for any direct communication
|
| One more reason to support the project!!
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