Zig is adamant that no AI code is allowed.
Open source programming languages are Maintained by a 501(c)(3) and contributor network. Any programmer can submit code to the repository, as long as they follow the Code of Conduct.
One of Zig’s rules prohibits submitting AI-assisted code. The policy is clear. We do not accept any content generated by, paraphrased from, or edited, brainstormed, or debugged by LLM. In short, keep the AI away.
On the JetBrains podcast, Zig President Andrew Kelly called AI-assisted contributions “always garbage.”
“People are sending us donations that have no value,” Kelly said. “It has negative value because it takes away review time from the team.”
Code contributions are reviewed by a small number of core team members. This is the “bottleneck,” as Kelley calls it. We have more pull requests than reviewers. At the time of the recording, Kelly said Zig had 200 outstanding pull requests.
Kelly said these AI-generated “marginal contributions” further slow down the team as a whole. “We’ve wasted everyone’s time.”
Zig was relatively small, but it had a big impact. This language was used to create Bun, for example, and was later acquired by Anthropic. The AI ban later caused drama between Bun and Zig.
Thanks to tools like Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, AI-assisted code has made its way into Silicon Valley. Some people use AI to edit or change code. Others use it to draft completely. Big tech companies are setting high goals for the percentage of code that should be and is already being written with AI.
Zig is not obligated to maximize efficiency like these publicly traded companies. Rather, Kelly said, “mentorship” is part of its core mission, and contributing to AI would be counterproductive.
“We’re all trying to get better at programming,” Kelly said. “People submitting AI pull requests are not contributing to this goal.”
According to Kelly, these AI programmers are “drive-by contributors,” people who may submit a pull request or two but never join the core team.
Banning AI is also easier. Kelly said that trying to say that only “suitable” AI pull requests will be accepted would require reviewers to judge each request.
“If I don’t say anything, it’s a very easy policy to enforce,” he said.