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AI Policy

We have this policy so that AI tools make earthaccess more enjoyable to work on, not harder. Making a contribution/PR is also a learning opportunity and introduces you to the people who maintain earthaccess. AI can deliver the contribution alone, but we continue to ask for the learning and community as well.

AI assistance is welcome, and so is needing help; submitting code you haven't read is not.

In short: disclose your AI use, understand and be able to explain anything you submit, stay in the conversation after you open a pull request, and don't let an AI agent open one on its own.

Scope

"AI" herein refers to generative AI tools like large language models (LLMs) that can generate, edit, and review software code, create and manipulate images, or generate human-like communication.

This policy applies to contributions from the wider community. Automated processes operated by the earthaccess maintainer team (for example, dependency updates and other repository automations) run under separate maintainer oversight and are not governed by the requirements below.

Responsibility

You are responsible for any code you submit to earthaccess's repositories, regardless of whether it was manually written or generated by AI. You must understand and be able to explain both the code you submit and the existing related code; submitting a patch you cannot explain yourself is not acceptable. The explanation must be yours, though you may use AI to translate or copy-edit it.

No autonomous AI agent contributions

The use of an AI agent that writes code and then submits a pull request autonomously is not permitted. A human must check any generated code and open the pull request themselves.

Disclosure

You must disclose whether AI was used in developing your pull request. The pull request template includes a disclosure checkbox; complete it for every pull request, including those where no AI tools were used. If AI was used, document which tool(s) and version(s), how they were used, and what code or text is AI generated. We will ask you to complete the disclosure before review.

Disclosure helps reviewers give your contribution appropriate attention, and keeps review transparent.

Engagement

Our code of conduct guarantees you a respectful review whatever you submit. Depth of engagement (mentoring, design discussion, patient iteration) is reciprocal, and we will politely decline it when a pull request's author doesn't respond to questions about their change. Failing CI, missing tests, and asking for help are never reasons to close a pull request; an unanswered "can you explain this change?" is.

All code in earthaccess is released under the MIT license. Contributors to earthaccess license their code under the same license when it is included into earthaccess's version control repository. That means contributors must own the copyright of any code submitted to earthaccess or must include the MIT-compatible open source license(s) associated with the submitted code in the patch. Code generated by AI may infringe on copyright and it is the submitter's responsibility to not infringe. We reserve the right to reject any pull requests, AI generated or not, where the copyright is in question.

Communication

When interacting with developers (forum, discussions, issues, pull requests, etc.) do not use AI to speak for you, except for translation or grammar editing. The conversation is where understanding and relationships come from.

Acknowledgements

This policy is adapted from the SciPy developers' AI policy, which is based on the SymPy developers' AI policy. Thanks to both teams.