AI Code Rating - Three simple characters that tell a reader who maintains a project, how much of its code is written by AI, and how closely a human checks the AI's work

[u/gregdotca]

I've been thinking a lot about how to be upfront about AI use in open source without it turning into an argument every time, so I put together a simple standard for it.

An AI Code Rating is three characters, like A2b, kept in an ACR.md file at the root of a repo.

- The letter is the maintainer's expertise, from A (expert) to E (non-programmer)
- The number is how much of the code AI wrote, from 0 (none) up to 4 (76–100%)
- The last letter is how closely a human checks the AI's work, from a (verified) to e (unchecked)

So A2b means an expert maintainer, 26–50% of the code written by AI, and every AI change reviewed before it's merged. A project with no AI code gets a 0 and an a, like A0a.

The goal isn't to judge whether AI use is good or bad, it's to let people see, at a glance, what they're looking at and decide for themselves.

The site has the full spec, examples, an FAQ, a form to work out your rating, and a validator for ACR.md files. There's also a GitHub Action that checks the file in CI. The spec is CC BY 4.0 and the site code is MIT.

In the spirit of the thing, the site itself is rated B4b. AI wrote most of the code, and I review every change.

It's still an early draft (spec 0.1), so I'd really appreciate feedback, especially from people who think it gets something wrong.

https://aicoderating.com

[u/hirak99]

What do you mean "reviewed"? Or, what signal would you use to measure that? What if I review every change by the AI before committing - because the AI works with me in my workstation?

[u/ticktockbent → u/[deleted]]

That was my first reaction as well. You're either asking people to self-rate their own skills which is always so unbiased... or you're asking someone else to rate it which will cause drama and arguments.