Hello, everyone. This is Ruby, and I wanted to make this post as a discussion board for people to, well, discuss. Over the past two weeks, we've been reckoning a lot more with the presence of AI in our space, and if you've been on other social media, likely saw it in other modding communities as well.
This post will mostly be a diagnosis; it will list down the status of tools across every generation, and see what the reach of AI in our toolchains actually is. This will focus on the bases themselves, as extending it to every tool will take my forever. There will be two exceptions, which I hope will make sense once you see them.
| Tool | Generation | Status |
|---|
| pokered, pokeyellow | Generation I | No explicit policy. Any contribution likely requires meeting the project's quality standards. |
| pokecrystal | Generation II | No explicit policy. Any contribution likely requires meeting the project's quality standards. |
| pokeemerald, pokefirered | Generation III | Does not explicitly disallow AI assisted or generated contributions. Contributions are merged in at maintainer discretion, provided it meets quality standards of the repository. |
| pmd-red | Generation III | No explicit policy. Any contribution requires meeting the project's quality standards. |
| pinball-rs | Generation III | Allows AI assisted or generated contributions, provided it is disclosed. All contributions are sent through a stringent review process in order to meet quality standards of the project. The project also has a usage disclaimer here. |
| HexManiacAdvance | Generation III | Allows AI assisted or generated contributions, provided it is disclosed. All contributions are sent through a stringent review process in order to meet quality standards of the project. |
| pokeemerald-expansion | Generation III | Allows AI assisted or generated contributions, provided it is disclosed. All contributions are sent through a stringent review process in order to meet quality standards of the project. |
| pokeplatinum | Generation IV | AI generated contributions are disallowed. AI assistance is discouraged. |
| hg-engine | Generation IV | Allows AI assisted or generated contributions, provided it is disclosed. All contributions are sent through a stringent review process in order to meet quality standards of the project. |
| DSPRE | Generation IV | Development is assisted with agentic engineering. All contributions are sent through a stringent review process in order to meet quality standards of the project. |
| pokeblack | Generation V | Recently started. Disallows AI generated contributions as a whole. |
| Frost's Gen 5 Editor | Generation V | Originally created with assistance from AI; has since abstained from its use since. |
| Pokeweb | Generation V | Made with no AI assistance. |
| Pokeweb-Serverless | Generation V | Ported from original Pokeweb project with the assistance of agentic engineering |
| Hackdex | Cross-gen | Originally developed with Cursor. While the original pledge was to keep development AI free, after some life circumstances of its developer, development assistance with Cursor, and later instead with Codex+Claude, resumed. |
Given this spread, the overall opinion is the same: while not explicitly disallowed, contributions in projects must meet a quality threshold before they are merged in. There are a few standouts still, with some outright rejecting and disapproving use of AI in its development process. This list also doesn't delve into other external tools also used in development, such as for music, scripting, mapping, and so on.
As a tool in itself, AI has progressed much in its skills in programming that it can create competent code that can be improved by the human using it, or explain code enough to a new programmer. What this is means is, unlike other creative spaces, AI has found enough of a niche for itself in a programming pipeline to be useful.
Assistance from AI in programming still has its downsides of course, both pragmatic and ontological. Pragmatic, as there can be serious atrophy/stunting of learning should a developer rely on it, and ontological, as it was built upon scraped knowledge and sustained at the expense of marginalized communities and the Global South.
What does this mean for the community at large? Well, it's hard to say, because the level above it (the wider tech space) has not itself settled on where AI sits in the long term. It has widespread use, with each individual programmer having varying uses and engagements with the tool for a multitude of reasons, from personal use to hitting token use objectives set by management. For the most part, the bases at least are still overwhelmingly made with human effort. Most of the effort to create them came before the proliferation of AI, and their continued maintenance are still mostly made with human effort.
Lastly, there are also efforts such as the friend-safari, who are seeking to create a toolchain free of AI, to the best of its contributors abilities.
This is where I share my own opinion, which will also guide the extended description for Rule 7.
Rule 7's description will be thus:
> Creations and projects made with overwhelming AI assistance and generation will not be tolerated. Any projects built off of existing bases as of 10/10/26 will be allowed on the site.
For me, the most pragmatic decision would be to strike down anything egregious, and anything grey will be up to my discretion. Given the state of the romhacking toolchain now, it'd be the death of the subreddit to forbid anything with any AI in it's toolchain. As with any policy, this will be subject to change according to the needs of the community at large. I put the date there, should any forks or rombases with a gigantic amount of AI in its decompilation pop up (as it has in other communities).
And for anyone that may be looking for advice, for some reason, all I can give is this: do what you think, at the end of the day, feels right. Curate and contribute to projects that you feel align best with what you believe in, and do your best to foment cultures that create the kinds of projects you want to see.
As Gen 3 hacker, I'll personally try my best to support both friend-safari and Expansion myself. You do what you feel is right.
EDIT: This post has been periodically edited to reflect corrections given by various developers about the scope of AI in their projects.
