Updated AI usage policy for contributions

Follow up to #8289

The rise of agentic programming has eliminated the natural effort-based
backpressure that previously limited low-effort contributions. It is 
now too easy to create large amounts of bad content with minimal effort.

Open source projects have always had poor quality issues, PRs, etc. That 
comes with the territory. Unfortunately, the ease and carelessness by which 
these are now manifested has increased the "bad" count by 10x if not more. 
It's ruining it for the rest of us. This policy is a result of the bad, and 
I'm sorry about it.

**Going forward, AI generated contributions will only be allowed for
accepted issues and maintainers.** Drive-by pull requests with AI generated 
content will be immediately closed. 

**Going further, users who contribute bad AI generated content will be
immediately banned from all future contributions.** This is a zero-tolerance 
policy. If you use AI, you are responsible for the quality of your 
contributions. If you're using low-effort AI to create low-effort content, 
I have no human obligation to help you. 

If you are a junior developer who is really trying to learn and get
better, then please put aside the AI, do your best, and I will still
help. I want to help. But I expect effort and organic thinking in return.

This is not an anti-AI stance. This is an anti-idiot stance. Ghostty is
written with plenty of AI assistance and many of our maintainers use
AI daily. We just want quality contributions, regardless of how they are
made.

AI_POLICY.md

@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
+# AI Usage Policy
+
+The Ghostty project has strict rules for AI usage:
+
+- **All AI usage in any form must be disclosed.** You must state
+  the tool you used (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, Amp) along with
+  the extent that the work was AI-assisted.
+
+- **Pull requests created in any way by AI can only be for accepted issues.**
+  Drive-by pull requests that do not reference an accepted issue will be
+  closed. If AI isn't disclosed but a maintainer suspects its use, the
+  PR will be closed. If you want to share code for a non-accepted issue,
+  open a discussion or attach it to an existing discussion.
+
+- **Pull requests created by AI must have been fully verified with
+  human use.** AI must not create hypothetically correct code that
+  hasn't been tested. Importantly, you must not allow AI to write
+  code for platforms or environments you don't have access to manually
+  test on.
+
+- **Issues and discussions can use AI assistance but must have a full
+  human-in-the-loop.** This means that any content generated with AI
+  must have been reviewed _and edited_ by a human before submission.
+  AI is very good at being overly verbose and including noise that
+  distracts from the main point. Humans must do their research and
+  trim this down.
+
+- **No AI-generated media is allowed (art, images, videos, audio, etc.).**
+  Text and code are the only acceptable AI-generated content, per the
+  other rules in this policy.
+
+- **Bad AI drivers will be banned and ridiculed in public.** You've
+  been warned. We love to help junior developers learn and grow, but
+  if you're interested in that then don't use AI, and we'll help you.
+  I'm sorry that bad AI drivers have ruined this for you.
+
+These rules apply only to outside contributions to Ghostty. Maintainers
+are exempt from these rules and may use AI tools at their discretion;
+they've proven themselves trustworthy to apply good judgment.
+
+## There are Humans Here
+
+Please remember that Ghostty is maintained by humans.
+
+Every discussion, issue, and pull request is read and reviewed by
+humans (and sometimes machines, too). It is a boundary point at which
+people interact with each other and the work done. It is rude and
+disrespectful to approach this boundary with low-effort, unqualified
+work, since it puts the burden of validation on the maintainer.
+
+In a perfect world, AI would produce high-quality, accurate work
+every time. But today, that reality depends on the driver of the AI.
+And today, most drivers of AI are just not good enough. So, until either
+the people get better, the AI gets better, or both, we have to have
+strict rules to protect maintainers.
+
+## AI is Welcome Here
+
+Ghostty is written with plenty of AI assistance, and many maintainers embrace
+AI tools as a productive tool in their workflow. As a project, we welcome
+AI as a tool!
+
+**Our reason for the strict AI policy is not due to an anti-AI stance**, but
+instead due to the number of highly unqualified people using AI. It's the
+people, not the tools, that are the problem.
+
+I include this section to be transparent about the project's usage about
+AI for people who may disagree with it, and to address the misconception
+that this policy is anti-AI in nature.

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -13,91 +13,10 @@ it, please check out our ["Developing Ghostty"](HACKING.md) document as well.
 > time to fixing bugs, maintaining features, and reviewing code, I do kindly
 > ask you spend a few minutes reading this document. Thank you. ❤️
 
-## AI Assistance Notice
+## AI Usage
 
-> [!IMPORTANT]
->
-> The Ghostty project allows AI-**assisted** _code contributions_, which
-> must be properly disclosed in the pull request.
-
-If you are using any kind of AI assistance while contributing to Ghostty,
-**this must be disclosed in the pull request**, along with the extent to
-which AI assistance was used (e.g. docs only vs. code generation).
-
-The submitter must have also tested the pull request on all impacted
-platforms, and it's **highly discouraged** to code for an unfamiliar platform
-with AI assistance alone: if you only have a macOS machine, do **not** ask AI
-to write the equivalent GTK code, and vice versa — someone else with more
-expertise will eventually get to it and do it for you.
-
-> [!WARNING]
-> **Note that AI _assistance_ does not equal AI _generation_**. We require
-> a significant amount of human accountability, involvement and interaction
-> even within AI-assisted contributions. Contributors are required to be able
-> to understand the AI-assisted output, reason with it and answer critical
-> questions about it. Should a PR see no visible human accountability and
-> involvement, or it is so broken that it requires significant rework to be
-> acceptable, **we reserve the right to close it without hesitation**.
-
-**In addition, we currently restrict AI assistance to code changes only.**
-No AI-generated media, e.g. artwork, icons, videos and other assets is
-allowed, as it goes against the methodology and ethos behind Ghostty.
-While AI-assisted code can help with productive prototyping, creative
-inspiration and even automated bugfinding, we have currently found zero
-benefit to AI-generated assets. Instead, we are far more interested and
-invested in funding professional work done by human designers and artists.
-If you intend to submit AI-generated assets to Ghostty, sorry,
-we are not interested.
-
-Likewise, all community interactions, including all comments on issues and
-discussions and all PR titles and descriptions **must be composed by a human**.
-Community moderators and Ghostty maintainers reserve the right to mark
-AI-generated responses as spam or disruptive content, and ban users who have
-been repeatedly caught relying entirely on LLMs during interactions.
-
-> [!NOTE]
-> If your English isn't the best and you are currently relying on an LLM to
-> translate your responses, don't fret — usually we maintainers will be able
-> to understand your messages well enough. We'd like to encourage real humans
-> to interact with each other more, and the positive impact of genuine,
-> responsive yet imperfect human interaction more than makes up for any
-> language barrier.
->
-> Please write your responses yourself, to the best of your ability.
-> If you do feel the need to polish your sentences, however, please use
-> dedicated translation software rather than an LLM.
->
-> We greatly appreciate it. Thank you. ❤️
-
-Minor exceptions to this policy include trivial AI-generated tab completion
-functionality, as it usually does not impact the quality of the code and
-do not need to be disclosed, and commit titles and messages, which are often
-generated by AI coding agents.
-
-An example disclosure:
-
-> This PR was written primarily by Claude Code.
-
-Or a more detailed disclosure:
-
-> I consulted ChatGPT to understand the codebase but the solution
-> was fully authored manually by myself.
-
-An example of a **problematic** disclosure (not having tested all platforms):
-
-> I used Amp to code both macOS and GTK UIs, but I have not yet tested
-> the GTK UI as I don't have a Linux setup.
-
-Failure to disclose this is first and foremost rude to the human operators
-on the other end of the pull request, but it also makes it difficult to
-determine how much scrutiny to apply to the contribution.
-
-In a perfect world, AI assistance would produce equal or higher quality
-work than any human. That isn't the world we live in today, and in most cases
-it's generating slop. I say this despite being a fan of and using them
-successfully myself (with heavy supervision)!
-
-Please be respectful to maintainers and disclose AI assistance.
+The Ghostty project has strict rules for AI usage. Please see
+the [AI Usage Policy](AI_POLICY.md). **This is very important.**
 
 ## Quick Guide