It seems like the author feels like a fraud because they successfully made a contribution without learning anything.

The quality of a contribution is not a function of how much you learned or grew while you made it. Learning and growth are part of your compensation for making the contribution. The author is not a fraud for not learning anything. If anything, it seems like they should feel short-changed!

When voluntarily making contributions to open-source projects, everyone should of course feel free not to use AI tools if they want. However, I would argue that using AI tools is a valuable skill itself, and worth practicing.

I learn a lot from code I read, but don’t write. Did the author not read the code and simply threw it over the fence?