Hacker News

points by domenkozar 2 days ago | 0 comments

Sad to see Servo ban AI contributions.

Feels like a missed opportunity where we could take a giant leap forward.

The AI policy for Servo, which prohibits AI contributed code (but allows you to use AI to inspect and learn about the codebase), was written in mid-2024, which seems like an eternity ago.

But even in June 2026 they reiterated this ban and added CI checks to automatically reject AI-coauthored patches [1].

> For developers of Servo itself, please note that per project policy, you must not use the output of large language models or other generative AI tools in your contributions. To help us enforce that, we now have CI checks that reject AI agents as coauthors (@SimonSapin, @delan, #44723).

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

[–] matkoniecz 2 days ago

> For now, we’re taking a cautious approach to these tools due to their effects — both unknown and observed — on project health and maintenance burden. This field is evolving quickly, so we are open to revising this policy at a later date, given proposals for particular tools that mitigate these effects.

seems entirely reasonable reason and approach, and I see no reason to force everyone approach LLM in the same way

[–] nerdypepper 2 days ago

my read is that with the right guidance, implementing the vast amount of the CSS spec for example, could be done easily with some AI assistance, the spec is incredibly well defined. just comparing the layouting and styling in blitz[0] (which does use agents), servo is lacking quite a bit, and the implementation of various features don't follow the spec exactly.

that being said, i entirely respect their decision of course, perhaps they will revisit at a later point in time!

[0]: https://github.com/dioxuslabs/blitz

[–] nicoburns 2 days ago

(I'm the maintainer of Blitz)

My experience is that it varies greatly by feature.

Something like border styles, the agent was able to do pretty effectively. Although it still took a few hours iterating on it to get the performance characteristics and edge cases right.

More complex features like hoisting position absolute nodes and other layout features still take days to weeks of iterating to get something usable that isn't so fragile it'll blow up the next time you touch something.

[–] Zecc 12 hours ago

Edge cases in the context of rendering border styles. Some unintentional word play there. :)

[–] fschuett 2 days ago

Yes, this was how I did it in Azul[1], which is „reverse engineered from the W3C spec“. But it still took a lot of „agentic debugging“ to get the same visual layout as Chrome[2]. It wasn‘t „easily“ done however and it‘s not yet stable.

[1] https://azul.rs/ui

[2] https://azul.rs/ui/reftest

[–] 8NNTt8z3QvLT8tp 2 days ago

CSS isn't super well defined actually, at least not compared with HTML or JavaScript.

[–] Y_Y 2 days ago

Giant leaps aren't typically the way to steady progress

[–] iknowstuff 2 days ago

It’s kind of a wink wink situation. Language like this simply encourages developers to vet code written by AI thoroughly to avoid being caught with obvious slop.

But as maintainers we (I don’t work on servo, but other projects) know that obviously people use AI anyway.

[–] SimonSapin 18 hours ago

As a project member I can tell you there's no winking here. If you knowingly violate policy maybe you can get away with it or maybe not, but either way you're an asshole

[–] samus 2 days ago

That's good enough and would prove that one put effort into the PR. Which is exactly what that policy actually wants to achieve.

[–] lanyard-textile 2 days ago

+1. If you submit code that was drafted by AI but vetted well by a human to not be obvious... Good :)

[–] matkoniecz 1 day ago

Depends on a project, some are ideologically opposed to LLMs and would consider it as a betrayal to do this.

[–] ravenstine 2 days ago

If you believe AI isn't still involved in contributions to Servo, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.