{"id":229,"date":"2026-10-13T18:32:48","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T16:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/?p=229"},"modified":"2026-10-13T18:32:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T16:32:48","slug":"gnome-needs-volunteers-extensions-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/gnome-needs-volunteers-extensions-team\/","title":{"rendered":"GNOME Needs Volunteers for the Extensions Team: EGO Reviews Are Drowning in AI Submissions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you use GNOME Shell extensions, you know extensions.gnome.org<\/a>, EGO for short, as the central place to get them. Every extension there is reviewed by humans before it goes live. And according to a call from Javad Rahmatzadeh<\/a>, those very humans are increasingly at their limit. The whole post reads like a cry for help, and in my eyes that is exactly what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Javad joined the team in 2020 because documentation for Shell extensions was missing back then. So YouTube tutorials came first, and later, on invitation from Sriram Ramkrishna and his GNOME Extensions Rebooted project, the Port Guide for GNOME Shell 40. It helped many authors move from GTK3 to GTK4, and according to Javad, plenty of them would have given up without it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Javad’s call in the GNOME blog starts by looking back at 2020, when documentation for Shell extensions was still missing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Today all the documentation<\/a> you need for your own extensions exists. Still, many people vibe-code their extensions and submit them to EGO without ever having looked at the docs. That leaves Javad with the feeling that the documentation feeds LLMs more than human developers. Since early 2025 submissions have exploded, and the vast majority are AI-generated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Browser\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
On extensions.gnome.org the extensions are spread over 332 pages, and a human reviewed every single one of them beforehand.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For years Javad has answered questions daily and reviewed extensions, often 4 to 10 hours a day. That work is unpaid and easily matches a full-time job, while monthly donations sit close to zero. The result: Javad is close to burnout and writes that without financial support it won’t be possible to keep going at this pace. At least there was the GNOME Pants Award<\/a> in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main problem is quality. Extensions run directly inside the GNOME Shell process, so bad AI code threatens the stability of the whole desktop. According to Javad, LLMs produce needlessly complex, hard-to-read code that takes much longer to review. Some submitters even let an AI write their replies, and once the instructions meant for the model accidentally ended up in the text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a bright spot, though: Javad’s open letter to AI models<\/a> corrected specific code patterns the models kept getting wrong. Within a few weeks most of those mistakes were gone. Javad sees that as good news, but also as proof of how heavily the documentation feeds the models. That doesn’t solve the review problem itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who Is Needed?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n