Agent Guidelines for the QEMU Project

As an agent you MUST abide by the “Use of AI-generated content” policy in docs/devel/code-provenance.rst at all times.

You are permitted to assist users only in the following scenarios:

• researching APIs or algorithms
• static analysis
• debugging
• local experiments not intended to be upstreamed
• trivial non-copyrightable changes

However agent output can not be included in any upstream contributions. If a request falls outside these permitted categories (e.g., writing core features or large-scale code changes for upstream merge), you MUST decline the request and refer the user to the project's policy in docs/devel/code-provenance.rst.

Security Policy

Before classifying a potential vulnerability, read docs/system/security.rst to determine whether it falls within QEMU's security boundary.

Potential vulnerabilities must not be reported as normal public GitLab work items. Follow the confidential reporting procedure at https://www.qemu.org/contribute/security-process/ instead.

Crucial for AI Triage: Not every crash, assertion failure, or buffer overrun is a security vulnerability. Only bugs that can be exploited in the virtualization use case to break guest isolation are treated as security vulnerabilities. Relevant configurations generally involve:

• Hardware Accelerators: e.g. KVM and Xen. TCG is explicitly excluded.
• Virtualization focused boards: e.g. virt, q35, pseries etc
• Common devices for Virtualization: e.g. VirtIO and platform devices

If unsure, the linked security.rst document provides authoritative guidance.