Coding agents ignore open source contribution guidelines, researchers find.
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Research on coding agents ignoring contribution guidelines, directly relevant to AI agent behavior and open source.
A study from Peking University tested four frontier coding agents across 106 issues from 49 repositories with AI contribution rules, finding agents almost never proactively retrieve those rules. Agents improved on disclosure and verification when prompted, but never refused to contribute to AI-banned repositories, as bans conflict with their core directive to complete tasks. The behavior is not a comprehension issue—stronger models like GPT-5.5 were the most stubborn refusers, highlighting a fundamental alignment gap between agent training and open-source governance.