Attribution in the Age of AI Assistants: What the Linux Kernel's 'Assisted-by' Tag Means for Your Git Workflow

Originally published on tamiz.pro.

When Greg Kroah-Hartman pushed a handful of new trailer keywords into the Linux kernel's Sign-off conventions — including Assisted-by, Inspired-by, Referenced-by, Reviewed-by, and Acked-by variants — most people scrolled past. But for developers who regularly pair with AI, this was a quiet inflection point. The kernel, one of the most process-driven open-source projects in the world, formally acknowledged that AI assistance is now part of the collaborative chain. What happens next in your Git workflow matters more than you might think.

What Changed in the Kernel Tree

In mid-2025, the kernel maintainers updated Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst and the scripts/get_maintainer.pl infrastructure to recognize a new class of trailer tags. Previously, git commit messages could include Reported-by, Tested-by, Reviewed-by, Suggested-by, Acked-by, and Signed-off-by. The new additions fill a gap:

Trailer Tag