Comment by btown | Hacker News Reader

Comment by btown | Hacker News Reader

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Part of this, as others have noted, is due to: https://book.servo.org/policy/ai-usage.html

> Can I submit a PR that includes code generated by AI tools?

> No. This includes (but is not limited to) all generative AI tools like Claude, Codex, ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini, and Windsurf.

For something like a browser, this de facto limits the set of people who can contribute to something that touches the layout engine (e.g. the ineffable but brilliant https://github.com/servo/servo/blob/main/components/layout/f...) to just those already familiar with the code.

A much better middle ground IMO would be to quarantine first-time committers behind an AI-generated-PRs-will-not-be-reviewed policy, but to allow those who understand and respect the cycle enough to get PRs accepted, to begin using AI to give the team leverage. Without some kind of policy like that, Servo's sadly going to fall behind literally any other open-source project that people could dedicate their time towards.

Servo is already lacking reviewers. How would accepting AI contributions help?

I was excited in 2014 when I discovered Rust, because it just totally made sense that it was where the future of coding was moving to.

Now, in 2026 I’m excited by LLMs because the combo of Rust+AI is literally an unstoppable force..

It’s a shame they’re building the Lamborghini of rendering engines but refuse to source parts unless it’s delivered on horseback

You are in a cult.

Servo is already lacking reviewers. How would accepting AI contributions help?

I get what you’re saying, but LLMs really aren’t great at writing code for use in “key” codebases where every line needs to be clear and clear easy to review, not adding to the maintenance burden any more heavily than necessary.

Now reviewing code, finding flaws? They’re great at that. Prototyping new ideas, and suggesting potential solutions? Amazingly useful. Writing lots of code solving problems in projects focused on having the features not on being long term secure and easy to extend? They seem to do this very well.

But the actual code going into a web browser engine needs to be very carefully produced.

So I’d compare it more to how c++ going into safety critical systems cannot use any of the “cool” features of c++. Code going into a web browser cannot be generated without a human hand tightly on the tiller.

Why not use AI to help familiarize yourself with it?

By the time you understand it you shouldn't need AI to write changes. First-time committers are the ones most likely to use AI.

This is covered in the FAQ. AI may help you, but oftentimes the assumptions about the code are either noisy or simply wrong.

> > No. This includes (but is not limited to) all generative AI tools like Claude, Codex, ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini, and Windsurf

Based on the tool listed here, you can probably know when this policy was first written. For instance, Windsurf is long gone and Cursor is not tier 1 anymore.

Crazy to think how much the space of AI coding agent has evolved in less than 2 years.

Yeah, it's a fun time capsule. The policy was written in July 2024 [1]. There's a contentious discussion in 2025 [2] where they discussed it and reaffirmed the ban. Then in June 2026 they reiterated the ban and added CI checks to reject AI coauthors [3]

[1] https://github.com/servo/book/commit/5afb80d5b08b259ca359cfe...

[2] https://github.com/servo/servo/discussions/36379

[3] https://servo.org/blog/2026/06/30/may-in-servo/

They were right at each time for different reasons

In 2024 the tools were severely lacking. Today they work better (if subpar and verbose), but put an undue burden on reviewers (which are already in short supply)

We have got enough AI slop, and it is very easy to produce more. I am happy somebody is trying a different route.

You can see how Ladybird is "progressing" right now because of AI. I think it's a shame because now AI would just be using parts from chromium or Firefox, and they're going to encouter eventually an unmaintainable codebase. How a new browser engine helps here then?

It is not like they are fully vibe coding the browser. And Ladybird was not built with a prompt. They already had a more or less fully functioning browser before they introduced the use of AI.

The design of Ladybird follows the web standards closely as well. It is going to be quite different from older engines. And the code is quite organized, if your concern is AI slop from layers and layers of AI added features. I do not think that is how they are using it at all.

My biggest gripe with Ladybird is that they adopted some pretty large components written by Google. You cannot really use Skia and say that you do not rely on Google as an example.

Not relying on Google was their big selling point, since every other browser is Google-dependent.

why would the middle ground be betterf itqs not as if that code needs to be reviewed any less. a coder reviewing their own code is pretty useless, so this would still occupy revewers on ai slop

The solution is to fork. An indie browser engine needs LLMs to have any hope of ever catching up with the big 3.

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