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r/homeassistant: a huge upcoming release raises AI worries, and a core developer explains how they review code

A maintainer's candid account of how a big open-source project handles a flood of AI-assisted contributions.

The post is an image, titled "Who's excited?", about the size of the upcoming Home Assistant 2026.11 release. German Home Assistant blog simon42 reports the 2026.11 beta is out with the final release planned for November 4, and that it reads like three releases at once, with HACS (the community add-on store) becoming a built-in marketplace and support for Matter cameras.

The top reply, from user frenck_nl, who says the screenshotted post is his, explains that the release is big because of a large number of contributions, that bringing HACS in was only a few pull requests, and that AI shows up in many submissions. He writes that the team has added static checks and tuned automated Copilot reviews, that his analysis of 10,000 reviews found about 40% of review comments were repeats worth automating, and that human judgment still decides. Other commenters say they'll wait for a later point release, or doubt that a large count of merged changes is good news in the AI era. About 2,600 upvotes in a 386,000-member community.

Read it at the source
Cascadic Analysis 2
UndertowRole underspecification / the Doorman Problem

What hidden risk could pull against this, even if the news is good?

frenck_nl's numbers draw the line well: about 40% of review comments were repeats worth automating with static checks and tuned Copilot reviews. The other 60% is the part of a reviewer's role that isn't written down, judging whether a change fits the project and will be maintainable, and he says human judgment still decides. The risk in a release this large is volume quietly shifting more of that judgment to the automated layer.

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UndertowDelayed Consequence / False Success Problem

What hidden risk could pull against this, even if the news is good?

A change that passes static checks and an automated review can still fail in someone's home months later, on a device combination nobody tested. Commenters planning to wait for a later point release are guarding against exactly that. A large count of merged changes measures throughput at merge time, not how the code behaves once it is running.

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Rabbit Holes 1
  • Home Assistant

    After exploring Who’s excited?, the project itself is introduced in Home Assistant.

    Wikipedia describes Home Assistant as free, open-source software for centralized home automation that works across device brands and runs with local control.

    Wikipedia · Wade · 5 min

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