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Overview

Kody reviews your PRs automatically or on demand, adds clear suggestions, and helps your team decide when to merge. Below is the simple, user-facing view of how it works. Reference: Figma board

When Kody Runs

  • PR opened
  • New commit pushed to the PR (depending on cadence)
  • Manual trigger via comment: @kody start-review

When Kody Skips

  • No new commits since the last run
  • Only merge commits with no effective changes
  • All changed files ignored by configured patterns
  • PR exceeds the configured file limit
  • Invalid or missing configuration

What Kody Does

  • Resolves which settings apply (global → repo → directory) and validates them
  • Collects the relevant diffs and context for this PR
  • Runs PR-level checks (e.g., custom rules and cross-file analysis when enabled)
  • Reviews changed files with focus on the diff
  • Filters and prioritizes suggestions to reduce noise (relevance, severity, dedupe, safeguards)
  • Posts inline comments and, when applicable, a PR-level summary
  • Optionally approves or requests changes if those policies are enabled
  • Remembers the last analyzed commit to keep follow-ups incremental

What You Get

  • Inline comments with concrete suggestions
  • Optional PR-level summary with highlights
  • Optional status: approved or changes requested (if enabled)

Status Reactions

Kody uses emoji reactions to show the live status of your code review directly in your Git provider. No guessing whether she’s working, done, or ran into a problem. She always replaces the previous emoji with the latest status (for example: 🚀 → 🎉, 👀, or 😕).
Supported on GitHub and GitLab. Azure DevOps and Bitbucket do not support reactions yet.

What each emoji means

  • 🚀 Processing — Kody is working on your code:
    • Analyzing files
    • Checking rules and policies
    • Generating suggestions
  • 🎉 Completed — Review finished:
    • All comments posted
    • Analysis complete
    • You can review the suggestions
  • 👀 Skipped — Review was skipped. Common reasons include:
    • No new commits since the last run
    • Only merge commits detected
    • PR/MR exceeds the configured file limit
    • No relevant files to review (ignored patterns)
    • Branch not configured for review
    • PR/MR in draft mode (if configured to skip drafts)
  • 😕 Error — Something went wrong:
    • Temporary technical issue during the review
    • Try again; join our Discord community if it persists

Where reactions appear

  • Automatic review (PR opened or new commit): reaction on the PR/MR description (top of the thread)
  • Manual review (comment @kody start-review): reaction on your comment where you invoked Kody

Example scenarios

  • New PR (automatic): 🚀 while running → 🎉 when finished
  • Manual command: 🚀 on your comment → 🎉 when finished
  • No changes since last run: 👀 reaction
  • Temporary issue: 😕 reaction

FAQs

I don’t see reactions
  • GitHub/GitLab: ✅ | Azure DevOps/Bitbucket: ❌ (not supported yet)
Why did the emoji change?
  • Normal—Kody replaces previous status (🚀 → 🎉/👀/😕)
I saw 👀 but wanted a review
  • Likely skipped: no new commits, merge-only, ignored files, or file limit
  • Fix: comment @kody start-review
I saw 😕

Settings That Matter

  • Automated vs manual reviews and follow-up cadence
  • Ignore patterns and base branches in scope
  • Custom rules and cross-file analysis
  • Suggestion controls: severity filter, grouping, and max suggestions
  • File limits and timeouts

Tips

  • Keep PRs small—large diffs reduce review quality
  • Link specs/tickets in PR description
  • Re-run with @kody start-review after addressing feedback