no-ai-coauthors — the byline is not shared

commit-msg hook · github action

No AI co‑authors

A commit-msg hook and GitHub Action that rejects commits carrying<br>AI attribution trailers — because the byline is the one place<br>accountability can&rsquo;t be shared.

Install the hook<br>Read the manifesto

$ pre-commit install --hook-type commit-msg<br>copy

COMMIT_EDITMSG<br>~/work · 9f2c1ab

1feat: add a retry budget to the sync worker

3Author: Ada Lovelace

4Signed-off-by: Ada Lovelace

5Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8

6Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T…

✗ commit rejected<br>✓ commit accepted · no AI co-authors

2 trailers removed

@@ why @@

the manifesto

The byline is not a shared resource.

AI co-author git-commit bylines are an impressive marketing hook —<br>but they provide no useful signal of provenance.

It is mid-2026. All code written is facilitated by a host of sophisticated tools.<br>The most recent of these are AI &lsquo;co-authors.&rsquo; These have incredible utility,<br>but — as with the other tools in the development toolchain —<br>they are not meaningfully accountable for their output.

At best, tagging the bot that generated code as a &lsquo;co-author&rsquo; adds noise to the<br>single most important accountability and attribution mechanism in the development<br>hierarchy. At worst, the practice implies similarly diffused responsibility.

As much as the act of code authorship is changing, the social rules for authorship<br>must not slip: we are responsible for our contributions.

The &lsquo;author&rsquo; is, as ever, the contributing person.

Remove corporate spam from commit messages.

— No AI co-authors.

@@ diff @@

what it catches

It strikes the tool. It keeps the person.

Matching runs on both the display name and the email, normalized — so a renamed bot<br>or a numeric noreply address doesn&rsquo;t slip through. A human is<br>never in the blast radius.

Rejected

# the commit will not be created

-Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8

-Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/…

-Co-authored-by: Copilot

-Co-authored-by: Cursor

-Co-authored-by: aider

ChatGPTGPTCodex<br>GeminiDevinWindsurf<br>OpenCodeAmazon QLlama<br>MistralDeepSeekQwen<br>GrokCodyCodeium<br>ClineTabnine+ more

Kept

# the commit goes through, untouched

+Co-authored-by: Claude Shannon

+Co-authored-by: Grace Hopper

+Signed-off-by: Ada Lovelace

## commented lines are ignored, too

It blocks the bot named Claude.

It welcomes the human named Claude Shannon.

@@ use @@

install

Pin 1.0.0. Pick your hook manager.

Every path points at the public repo and a tagged release, so installs are repeatable. Swap the tag when you upgrade.

pre-commit<br>prek<br>Lefthook<br>GitHub Actions<br>Plain Git<br>Husky

Add the repo to .pre-commit-config.yaml, then install the commit-msg stage.

.pre-commit-config.yamlcopy

default_install_hook_types: [pre-commit, commit-msg]<br>repos:<br>- repo: https://github.com/GoodHatsLLC/no-ai-coauthors<br>rev: 1.0.0<br>hooks:<br>- id: no-ai-coauthors

terminalcopy

$ pre-commit install --hook-type commit-msg

prek reads the same config, or use a native prek.toml entry.

prek.tomlcopy

default_install_hook_types = ["pre-commit", "commit-msg"]

[[repos]]<br>repo = "https://github.com/GoodHatsLLC/no-ai-coauthors"<br>rev = "1.0.0"<br>hooks = [{ id = "no-ai-coauthors" }]

terminalcopy

$ prek install --hook-type commit-msg

Consume it as a Lefthook remote config, then install.

lefthook.ymlcopy

remotes:<br>- git_url: https://github.com/GoodHatsLLC/no-ai-coauthors<br>ref: 1.0.0<br>configs:<br>- lefthook.yml

terminalcopy

$ lefthook install

Use the repo directly as a composite action. On push it reads the event payload; on pull_request it reads the PR commits.

.github/workflows/no-ai-coauthors.ymlcopy

name: no-ai-coauthors<br>on:<br>pull_request:<br>push:<br>jobs:<br>no-ai-coauthors:<br>runs-on: ubuntu-latest<br>permissions:<br>contents: read<br>pull-requests: read<br>steps:<br>- uses: GoodHatsLLC/no-ai-coauthors@1.0.0

No hook manager at all — download the script and point core.hooksPath at it.

terminalcopy

$ mkdir -p .githooks<br>$ curl -fsSL \<br>https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoodHatsLLC/no-ai-coauthors/1.0.0/hooks/no-ai-coauthors \<br>-o .githooks/commit-msg<br>$ chmod +x .githooks/commit-msg<br>$ git config core.hooksPath .githooks

The package exposes a no-ai-coauthors bin for Node-oriented managers.

.husky/commit-msgcopy

no-ai-coauthors "$1"

package.json · simple-git-hookscopy

"simple-git-hooks": {<br>"commit-msg": "no-ai-coauthors \"$1\""

Your name is on the commit. Mean it.

Get it on GitHub ↗<br>Install paths