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+- Feature Name: N/A
+- Start Date: 2026-03-13
+- RFC PR: [rust-lang/rfcs#3936](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3936)
+- Issue: [rust-lang/leadership-council#273](https://github.com/rust-lang/leadership-council/issues/273)
+
+## Summary
+[summary]: #summary
+
+We adopt a *be present* contribution policy for the Rust Project.
+
+## Design axioms
+
+The policy rests on four principles — four *beliefs* about how to approach drafting a successful policy.
+
+- **Let's start from common ground.**
+  - I.e., people have diverse views; let's start with those that we share.
+- **What matters is what's in front of us.**
+  - I.e., what comes over the wall is what defines our experience; we can tell when a PR is well reviewed and when a contributor understands it.
+- **Policy defines the unacceptable, not the disappointing.**
+  - I.e., policy needs to err on the side of avoiding false positives because we'll put moral weight behind these determinations.  Well-meaning people acting reasonably will still sometimes disappoint us, and that's not what we're trying to catch.
+- **Contributing requires being present.**
+  - I.e., we expect the person coming to us to be engaged in the work and with us.  This is true whether the person is using tools or whether the person is bringing to us the work of an internal team.
+
+## Contribution policy
+
+Contributing to the Rust Project requires *being present* — present for the work and present when working with maintainers.
+
+- **Effort**: Being present means pulling your weight — putting in the same level of effort a maintainer will have to put in to review it.  This level varies by the task and by the cost of review, but it's never less than being careful and thoughtful.
+- **Accountability**: Being present means being responsible for everything you send us.  We expect you to be involved with the work, to understand it, to be able to explain it, to check it carefully, and to respect our time.
+- **Compassion**: Being present means engaging with reviewers as collaborators.  Reviewers take your work seriously and use care and kindness in interactions.  Help them help everyone by listening carefully, reflecting, and replying compassionately.
+
+When these criteria are not satisfied, we say that the contributor is *not present*.
+
+Maintainers and moderators are **not** required to put effort into explaining rejection of contributions where the contributor is not present.
+
+*Contributions* include pull requests, issues, proposals, and comments.
+
+### Examples of failing to be present
+
+These illustrate how to apply the policy.  The list is not exhaustive.
+
+- Submitting AI-generated work when you weren't in-the-loop, when you haven't checked it with care, when you don't understand it, or when you can't explain it to a reviewer fails *accountability*.  If you haven't engaged with the work and can't engage with review questions about it, you aren't being present as its contributor.
+- Feeding reviewer questions into an AI tool and proxying the output directly back fails *compassion*.  The reviewer is investing in you; that investment requires your presence.
+- Submitting work — whether AI-generated, written by others (and used with permission), or written by hand — without exercising care and attention proportional to what you're asking of reviewers fails *effort*.  Presence is incompatible with carelessness and inattention.
+
+Informally, contributions that fall short may be called "slop" and the behavior "vibecoding".