LLVM proposes two-PR limit for non-committers

LLVM maintainers are moving to limit non-committers to two open pull requests at a time, a direct response to reviewer burnout and a surge of small, often AI-assisted patches clogging project dashboards.

Reid Kleckner floated the policy after discussions at the US LLVM developer meeting and earlier RFCs on AI contributions and contributor rules. Anyone without write access could still open a couple of fixes, but could no longer flood the queue with dozens of narrow changes in search of rubber-stamp reviews. Analysis of the then-open queue showed 3,661 PRs from 2,010 non-committers; a limit of two would have blocked or closed 28 percent of those PRs while touching only 14 percent of the contributors. Most non-committers already stay at or below two open requests.

Kleckner called the step drastic yet necessary and wants rough consensus inside a week so the limit can be switched on before the project council meeting on 2 December, with later tuning expected. Early reactions on the LLVM Discourse board treated the two-PR ceiling as the minimum useful action and a workable stopgap while broader process changes are designed. One concern still on the table is the rush of new contributors who immediately claim freshly filed issues; mentoring requirements or other follow-ups may come later.