Virtually Attend FOSDEM 2026

AI-assisted contributors can now produce patches that appear senior at first glance: fast, polished, and surprisingly complex. But many of these contributions arrive without the context, intent, or architectural understanding that maintainers rely on during review. This emerging pattern — the rise of the “Synthetic Senior” — is reshaping expectations around mentorship, review culture, and long-term project sustainability.

Maintainers face a growing dilemma: welcoming new contributors while navigating an influx of high-volume, low-context PRs that demand deep review time. Traditional mentorship doesn't scale to this volume, and without new guardrails, it’s a recipe for burnout. While platforms, including GitHub, iterate on systemic solutions to filter this noise, communities need immediate, practical strategies to protect their maintainers today.

Drawing on discussions with seasoned maintainers and data from AI tooling pilots across open source foundations, this talk offers community-centered strategies for adapting to the AI era without losing what makes FOSS resilient. We’ll explore:

• Demonstrating comprehension: Contribution workflows that encourage understanding rather than pure generation, helping contributors show they can maintain what they propose.
• Helpful friction: How small, intentional barriers can surface genuine contributors and reduce maintainer fatigue.
• Self-serve onboarding: Using automation and pre-flight checks to move the first-pass review back to contributors.
• Healthy boundaries: Re-establishing norms around closing contributions that lack necessary context, while keeping the door open for genuine contributors.

This session isn’t about banning AI. It is about building the guardrails that protect human mentorship and keep free software communities healthy.