Kernel gains in-tree agent skill for correct Fixes tags

Sasha Levin has proposed adding an agents directory to the Linux kernel tree so coding assistants can follow shared, in-tree skills. The first skill, find-fixes, is meant to stop a long-running source of pain in stable maintenance: Fixes tags that name the wrong commit.

The skill inspects git history and returns a candidate Fixes tag with evidence. It does not edit the tree or rewrite the commit message; the calling workflow still applies the tag. Levin says blame and existing tags often point at code movement rather than the change that actually introduced the bug. In a controlled test on a staged Nouveau GSP fix, agents using the skill identified an earlier allocation mismatch that simple blame had missed, including on the already-published fix.

The work grew out of the Maintainers Summit. Theodore Ts'o said the request came after Hannes Reinecke estimated that 15 to 20 percent of Fixes tags are actively wrong, often because a contributor runs git blame on the first touched line and maintainers lack time to verify every tag. Until maintainers routinely get better attribution help, Ts'o warned that people backporting to their own kernels should not treat Fixes tags as reliable guidance on whether a production tree needs a given fix.

Greg Kroah-Hartman welcomed the direction, separating it from a pending AGENTS.md symlink issue. Placement and process details drew more debate. Levin left open whether skills belong under Documentation or at the tree root and added a MAINTAINERS entry for agent resources. Leon Romanovsky argued process-affecting changes should go to workflows@ rather than drowning on linux-kernel; Konstantin Ryabitsev initially preferred leaving traffic on lkml to spare workflows subscribers, then agreed workflows@ made sense once he saw the existing Documentation Process routing.

Documentation updates would require assistants to run the find-fixes guide before finalizing a bug-fix commit message, including when reviewing an existing tag. If the introducing commit cannot be established, the skill returns no trailer and the fix stays a draft. Thorsten Leemhuis separately asked for clearer human guidance when a recent change only exposes a much older bug: whether Fixes should name the exposure, the original introduction, or both.