[HN Gopher] No AI in Node.js Core
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No AI in Node.js Core
Author : porsager
Score : 31 points
Date : 2026-03-19 19:35 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| ramesh31 wrote:
| This is a silly reactionary response. Where is the line? Can I
| use AI to look up APIs? Write documentation? What if I write a
| function and ask AI to test it? What if I manually implemented an
| idea that I thought about after chatting with AI a few weeks ago?
|
| Stop treating this like it's going to go away. We need actual
| solutions for the FOSS community that make reviewing AI assisted
| work tractable.
| ronsor wrote:
| Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47413195
|
| @indutny explains their views in that thread.
| tylerchilds wrote:
| On the one hand, agreed
|
| On the other hand, I haven't and I believe many of us, have never
| paid node any money so it feels weird to dictate their approach.
| cj wrote:
| I have no unique perspective to add other than an obvious
| question: If the PR is low quality, why not just close/reject it?
| Does it matter if it's AI assisted or not?
| chjj wrote:
| That means all AI code would simply be rejected. This saves
| time.
| spoiler wrote:
| If AI writes a for loop the same way you would... Does it
| automatically mean the code is bad because you--or someone
| you approve of--didn't write it? What is the actual argument
| being made here? All code has trade offs, does AI make a bad
| cost/benefit analysis? Hell yeah it does. Do humans make the
| same mistake? I can tell you for certain they do, because at
| least half of my career was spent fixing those mistakes...
| Before there ever was an LLM in sight. So again... What's the
| argument here? AI can produce more code, so like more
| possibility for fuck up? Well, don't vibe code with "approve
| everything" like what are we even talking about? It's not the
| tool it's the users, and as with any tool theres going to be
| misuse, especially new and emerging ones lol
| chjj wrote:
| If this is your opinion, I ask you: are you okay with AI
| reviewing the PRs as well, or do you prefer a human to do
| it?
|
| Think carefully before responding.
| spoiler wrote:
| I don't know why you have to qualify your sentence with
| "think carefully before you respond" it makes it seem
| like you're setting up some rhetoric trap... But I'll
| assume it's in good faith? Anyway...
|
| I don't _mind_ if a review is AI-assisted. I 've always
| been a fan of the whole "human in the loop" concept in
| general. Maybe the AI helps them catch something they'd
| normally miss or gloss over. Everyone tends to have
| different priorities when reviewing PRs, and it's not
| like humans don't have lapses in judgement either (I'm
| not trying to anthropomorphise AI, but you know what I
| mean).
|
| My stance is same about writing code. I honestly don't
| mind if the code was written `ed` on a linux-powered
| toaster from 2005 with 32x32 screen, or if they wrote it
| using Claude Code 9000.
|
| At the end of the day, the person who's submitting the
| code (or signing off a review) is responsible for their
| actions.
|
| So in a round-about way, to answer your question: I think
| AI as part of the review is fine. As impressive as their
| output can be sometimes be, it can be both impressively
| good and impressively bad. So no, _only_ relying on AI
| for review is _not enough_.
| graphememes wrote:
| Honestly, this is a small pebble but feels like a ripple in the
| reasons why node.js is losing to bun and others.
| cpursley wrote:
| If they allow AI in Node it just might do a full rewrite into
| Rust, Go or Elixir ;)
| bwestergard wrote:
| This is how I would deal with the problem if I maintained node:
| "Please, use your tokens and experimental energies to port to
| Rust and pass the following test suite. Let us know when you've
| got something that works."
| mtndew4brkfst wrote:
| Well, survivorship bias means that Elixir is loudly populated
| by AI maximalists now. Just go look at the last several years
| worth of US/EU Elixirconf talks schedules, it's maybe a third
| of each cohort and included in keynote slots.
| pan69 wrote:
| > A 19k lines-of-code Pull Request was opened in January, 2026.
|
| Such a PR should be rejected simply because of the shear size of
| it, regardless of AI use. Seriously, who submits a 19k line PR?
| Just make many small ones.
| tracker1 wrote:
| How would you go about breaking up this particular set of
| functionality into smaller PRs, exactly? It's meant to
| introduce a virtualized file system... the size is dictated by
| the feature itself.
|
| Also, no mention at all regarding the test coverage, or impact
| if any on existing code paths specifically.
| spoiler wrote:
| The PR touched a lot of internals, including module code and
| mirrors the fs APIs. So, yes it was big, but the commit history
| was largely clean and followed a development story, and it was
| tested. The code quality was decent too. I didn't review all of
| it because I don't have a personal stake in this though.
|
| I suggest EVERYONE in this thread go read the the GitHub PR in
| question. There's some good arguments for and against AI, and
| what it means for FOSS... But good lord you will have to sift
| through the virtue signalling bullshit and have patience for
| the constant moving of goalposts
| vova_hn2 wrote:
| I don't see, how such policies can possibly achieve more good,
| then harm.
|
| A person, who posts slop for whatever reason, or runs bots that
| post slop, will simply ignore them.
|
| An honest person, who cares about the quality of their
| contribution and genuinely wants to improve the project will be
| more limited in the choice of tools to do so.
|
| So, this policy only serves to limit honest contributors, while
| doing absolutely nothing to stop spammers/slopposters.
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