We Love Interns · Project Jiachen Open Source Internship

Nine years of one repository

Sat, 31 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0800

Prologue: a wiki's birth certificate

On 2 May 2017 the repository held three things: a README, a Home page and a sidebar. What it recorded then was a group of interns doing robotics: ROS navigation and mapping, grasping with the XBot robot, MACE and GluonCV inference running on Android, an opencv.js browser demo, YOLO ported to phones, notes on trying TensorRT, and speech recognition experiments with PocketSphinx.

One detail in those files captures the context particularly well: the coding-conventions directory was called droid_coding_norm, and inside were droid_cpp_template.cpp, droid_py_template.py and ros_package_template.xml. "droid" was not the robotics droid but the English name of Zhongke Chongde. The repository's author worked there at the time — on his later CV, the company for that period is written as "Zhongke Chongde".

In 2017 the repository produced 254 commits, the busiest year in its history. One person, one wiki, a group of interns doing robotics — that is how the repository's first year was filled.

Chapter one: 2019, PLCT Lab and a strange grading system

In 2019 Wu Wei had a new signboard: PLCT Lab (Programming Language and Compilation Technology Laboratory) at the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The repository's centre of gravity shifted with it — plct-interns.md appeared, and robotics reports slowly gave way to compilers and toolchains.

Also on 14 March that year, the repository published for the first time something very short that would later have a deep influence: "How we grade interns' capability". It borrowed the setting of Tokiwadai Middle School in A Certain Scientific Railgun and split interns into six levels, LV0 to LV5:

LV5 Super Ability — can break a problem down and marshal resources independently, lead a development group and guarantee delivery;
LV4 Great Ability — can take on module-level development independently, and debug, locate and fix large systems such as LLVM on their own; can notice and point out mistakes made by LV4 and above;
LV3 Strong Ability — the bar is written concretely: "able to analyse a bug or crash independently";
LV2 Esper — can use git to collaborate with a team and complete development tasks assigned by a mentor within a week; this is the default recruitment bar;
LV1 / LV0 — offers are generally not made.

This grading is assessed by the lead as a "benevolent dictator", with input from mentors and LV4+ interns. There is one criterion: can you complete the day-to-day development work of a joint-programme host — "abilities the joint internship host does not need are outside the assessment".

A document in 2019 dared to write this because there was a real building site behind it: GCC, Binutils, LLVM, QEMU, glibc, V8, Gem5, Gentoo, Arch Linux, openEuler. The levels are not certificates; they are a division of labour.

Chapter two: 2022, "let glory fall on the blade's edge"

On 27 March 2022 the repository published a new category: senior interns. The first of the reasons given is nine characters long:

Let glory fall on the blade's edge.

The second and third reasons are more practical, and show the manager's anxiety more clearly: the existing "monthly observation of externally visible delivery" can see code and PRs but cannot see invisible output such as peer mentoring, cross-team help and maintaining relationships; and what the team really needs is to move people who have already proved themselves out of "simple work that produces a result in a month" and into work that is hard, slow and may not show a result that month.

So what senior interns receive is not an honorary title but a promise: the monthly stipend is never below the baseline, only above it.

In the same period an ecosystem grew up in the studio that is hard to reproduce today: the TARSIER operating system team, the simulator team, the Arch team, the Gentoo team, the LLVM team, the GCC team, the CAAT team, the oerv team, the Aya team… and a club that called itself the "Wenwen News Agency" (bunbun.md), working on the Aya programming language and a theorem prover, with a recruitment notice that read like a technical blog and a club flyer at once: "Only by implementing a feature and then using it to write code ourselves can we build an intuitive sense of whether the thing is 'any use'."

This group later became the LV5 and LV4+ names on the list: maintainers of large numbers of packages on Arch Linux RISC-V, the author of the LuaJIT RISC-V port, the lead of RustSBI, the person who submitted mainline kernel support for the K230, the person who made eunomia-bpf a community.

Chapter three: 2023, gathering and scattering

In June 2023 PLCT Lab went through its first big layoff since founding and entered a long period of financial contraction. The consequences are written directly in the repository:

Kubuds was founded. Two co-founders: Li Weiwei from PLCT's simulator team, Wang Junqiang from the TARSIER operating system team — both disbanded first, then set out again.
The TARSIER team disbanded between June and August 2023.
On 15 September 2023, a commit was titled "Remove non-PLCT content, simplify README and related internship process description".

This is the most honest thing about the repository: it does not pretend to be a curve that only goes up. Teams form, swell, disband, form again, and each time leaves a seam in git. After the seam, the repository is still there, and the recruitment is still there.

Chapter four: 2024, Project Jiachen

On 8 June 2024 Project Jiachen announced a new project: joint open-source internship recruitment and training. In the original words, "member organisations accelerate the RISC-V ecosystem work that matters to their own business with the smallest possible spend of money and management resources"; from the Jiachen Dragon year, more than 2,000 internship places open each year.

On 19 July 2024 weloveinterns added an introduction to Project Jiachen. From then on it was no longer just PLCT's recruitment page but the entrance to the whole of Project Jiachen — positions from dozens of member organisations go out through this repository.

On 12 October that year the repository did a subtraction: 253 files were deleted, intern reports from 2021 and earlier were gathered up, including the whole archives/ from the Zhongke Chongde period. The sentence left in the README reads a little movingly today:

If you are interested, or want to find a report you submitted, you can clone this repository and git checkout -b old-happy-time 664048d.

old-happy-time — the good old days.

Chapter five: 2025 to 2026, from "screening" to "training"

In December 2025 the PLCT Lab brand was retired. A name used for six years left the stage; recruitment and training did not stop, but continued under Project Jiachen.

On the first day of the Bingwu Horse year, 2026, Project Jiachen announced the Five-Colour Stone Project: the RISC-V Global Leadership Training Programme. Taking its meaning from Nüwa smelting five-colour stones to mend the sky, it works on a ten-year cycle, upgrading from "finding and screening talent" to "training talent systematically and over the long term".

In September 2026 the position numbers in the repository reached K181–K185: openEuler robotics package maintenance, openKylin embodied-intelligence cases, RT-Thread embedded, FlagOS RISC-V, RISC-V robot design. All five descriptions carry the same sentence:

This position is part of the Five-Colour Stone Project.

The wiki that held robotics assignments nine years ago is now the registration desk for a complete ten-year talent system.

Epilogue: why "only lazyparser is still in the same place"

Of 779 commits, 500 come from one person. It is not that he has no other identities — member of the RISC-V International Technical Steering Committee, chair of the ISA Infra HC, board member of the LLVM Foundation, founder and lead of Project Jiachen — but on this line his role has never changed: the person who reads CVs, arranges mentors, counts externally visible delivery at the end of the month, and then signs off the stipend.

Organisations scatter, brands retire, companies lay people off. What can remain in a repository is two other things:

One is rules: "we do not care about 985 or 211, or about your major or year ranking; selection is based entirely on ability and potential"; "we believe in women's potential in STEM and reserve at least 30% of internship places for women applicants"; the monthly stipend is assessed on externally visible output, and exceptional output is not capped. These sentences have been written from 2019 to now and have never been deleted.

The other is by-lines: every intern willing to be public has their name written in this repository, and now on this website. Glory is not given to abstract people; glory is given to specific people — falling on the blade, falling on those merged PRs.

The joint programme is made of iron; the interns flow through it. Those who flowed through are now maintaining your compiler.

Project Jiachen's lead launches a joint open-source internship recruitment and training project

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0800

Editor's note — This is the first post on this site. On 8 June 2024, the lead of Project Jiachen sent this announcement to member organisations; more than two months later the first positions went out one after another, and two years later the project was upgraded to the Five-Colour Stone Project. Below is the full text in translation (keeping the slips of the original; nothing has been corrected), with a few notes three years on at the end. The original was provided and authorised for republication by its author.15

Project announcement

On 8 June 2024, Wu Wei, lead of Project Jiachen, released a new project to Project Jiachen member organisations: [joint open-source internship recruitment and training]. The motive and starting point of this project is "member organisations accelerate the RISC-V ecosystem work that matters to their own business with the smallest possible spend of money and management resources", fully combining the lead's experience of running large-scale internship programmes over the past 10 years and building on the work PLCT Lab has already established in open-source communities. From the Jiachen Dragon year, more than 2,000 internship places open each year, and more than 1,000 student internships are recruited.

Project name

Project Jiachen joint open-source internship recruitment and training

Project goal

From the Jiachen Dragon year, Project Jiachen member organisations authorise the lead of Project Jiachen to recruit interns for open-source RISC-V work, opening a total of more than 2,000 internship places each year. The lead recruits at least 1,000 university students to take part in internships.

Funding arrangement

The lead of Project Jiachen is responsible for recruiting, training and managing interns. Companies participating in the project sign internship agreements directly with students, and pay the interns each month according to the externally visible delivery list and the stipend payment recommendation provided by the lead.

Internship tasks

The first batch takes RISC-V + ROS and the RISC-V documentation project as pilot projects; later, the Triton RISC-V software stack, new 32-bit RISC-V applications, the XiangShan Nanhu laptop, openKylin adaptation, SG2380 AI optimisation and others will be added. Project Jiachen member companies may propose new internship positions, and may limit the task scope of their own positions. Project Jiachen member organisations do not need to pay for internship projects that are of no help to the company. The specific expected deliverables will contribute directly to the company's products or business.

(The original attached a pilot case here: [Internship opportunity] ROS robot systems development intern.)

Contract formalities

The first internship signed is an open-source remote internship. The first internship contract is for three months; interns may join and leave at any time, and the internship certificate runs from the contract's effective date to the actual date of departure.

PLCT Lab and Kubuds are the organisations that host the training for these internship positions.

Kubuds is the backstop employer of the Project Jiachen joint internship training project, ensuring that every intern who passes the interview with the lead of Project Jiachen receives an internship contract, an internship certificate, and the monthly internship stipend.

Companies taking part in the joint internship project may use their own internship contract or the template recommended by Project Jiachen (adapted and simplified from a template downloaded from the website of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security).

After the internship period ends, the intern is free to negotiate a renewal with any Project Jiachen member company; this internship places no constraint on any later internship contract, and the form and content of the later internship are agreed between the employer and the intern.

STEM support for under-represented groups

The Project Jiachen internship project reserves at least 20% of places for women engineers. PLCT Lab reserves 50% of places for women and under-represented groups.

Member companies that have replied to join and offered internship places

Kubuds, PLCT Lab, Milk-V, Yingqi Intelligence, Zhongke Weilan, PerfXLab.

Reading this announcement three years later

1. Of the three sentences, only one really matters

The announcement contains many clauses, but the one that actually determined what this system looks like is: "pay the interns each month according to the externally visible delivery list and the stipend payment recommendation provided by the lead".

It solves three things at once: money is not paid for hours attended but for things that can be seen in public; companies bear no management cost and only sign and pay; the discretion over "what this month was worth" stays with the lead. The rule in the repository today — "count externally visible output each month, agree the stipend with the mentor, range 0–5k" — is the expansion of that sentence.1

2. "Do not need to pay for internship projects that are of no help to the company"

For companies this sentence is a good argument; for interns it is a filter: a position must produce something useful to the company, or it is not created. It also explains why the position numbers keep changing — positions are issued according to company needs, not according to the words "training programme".

3. The backstop sentence is the foundation of the whole system

Kubuds is the backstop employer of the Project Jiachen joint internship training project, ensuring that every intern who passes the interview with the lead of Project Jiachen receives an internship contract, an internship certificate, and the monthly internship stipend.

In three years the PLCT brand retired, the TARSIER team disbanded, several teams rose and fell, and this clause never changed. For someone who has not yet graduated, "someone guarantees the contract, the certificate and the money every month" is more solid than any vision statement.

The announcement promised "at least 20% of places reserved for women engineers; PLCT Lab reserves 50% for women and under-represented groups"; the repository README today says "reserve at least 30% of internship places for women applicants".1

The two numbers can coexist without contradiction: one is the floor promised to member organisations at launch, the other is the current recruitment line. It is worth recording because this kind of adjustment is itself evidence that the system is growing.

5. What happened after that

June–July 2024: within two weeks of launch, positions such as J123 (TPU-MLIR), J126 (openKylin ROS), J127 (XiangShan laptop) and J128 (deepin) went out one after another; on 14 July recognition of the "One Student One Chip" CBAS system was announced, and certified students received internship offers directly.16
October 2024: the repository made that famous subtraction, and 253 files were put away.
November 2024: those who passed the preliminary round of the MoonBit challenge skipped the machine test and went straight to mentor pick.
February 2026: the project was upgraded to the Five-Colour Stone Project, turning from "finding and screening talent" to "training talent systematically and over the long term", with the cycle stretched to ten years.2
September 2026: position numbers reached K181–K185, all described as "this position is part of the Five-Colour Stone Project".

From one announcement to a ten-year training system took two years. In between, the honest sentence about money was never changed.

Original source

"Project Jiachen's lead launches a joint open-source internship recruitment and training project", Project Jiachen WeChat account, June 2024: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/TenVAVzaWuUWGIWodGaFKA 15
Where that article sits in the Project Jiachen news index (the index records 2024-06-09 while the text says 8 June — presumably a one-day gap between sending to member organisations and public release): https://github.com/rv2036/rv2036-website/blob/main/_includes/third-party-news.md 16

Copyright in the original text belongs in part to Project Jiachen; republished with the author's authorisation. "Reading this announcement three years later" was written for this site.

We Love Interns · Project Jiachen Open Source Internship

Nine years of one repository

Prologue: a wiki's birth certificate

Chapter one: 2019, PLCT Lab and a strange grading system

Chapter two: 2022, "let glory fall on the blade's edge"

Chapter three: 2023, gathering and scattering

Chapter four: 2024, Project Jiachen

Chapter five: 2025 to 2026, from "screening" to "training"

Epilogue: why "only lazyparser is still in the same place"

Project Jiachen's lead launches a joint open-source internship recruitment and training project

Project announcement

Project name

Project goal

Funding arrangement

Internship tasks

Contract formalities

STEM support for under-represented groups

Member companies that have replied to join and offered internship places

Reading this announcement three years later

1. Of the three sentences, only one really matters

2. "Do not need to pay for internship projects that are of no help to the company"

3. The backstop sentence is the foundation of the whole system

4. The share went from 20% to 30%

5. What happened after that

Original source