Code Review Flow

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Overview

Fossy reviews your PRs automatically or on demand, adds clear suggestions, and helps your team decide when to merge. Below is the full execution lifecycle and architecture of how reviews are processed end-to-end.

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When Fossy Runs

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

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When Fossy 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

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What Fossy 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

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What You Get

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

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Status Reactions

Fossy 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 😕).

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What each emoji means

• 🚀 Processing — Fossy 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

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Where reactions appear

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

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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

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FAQs

I don’t see reactions

• GitHub / GitLab / Forgejo: ✅ native reactions
• Azure DevOps / Bitbucket: ❌ no reaction API — look for the status emoji posted as a comment instead

Why did the emoji change?

• Normal—Fossy replaces previous status (🚀 → 🎉/👀/😕)

I saw 👀 but wanted a review

• Likely skipped: no new commits, merge-only, ignored files, or file limit
• Fix: comment @fossy review --force — a plain start-review will skip again if there are no new commits

I saw 😕

• Retry with @fossy start-review. If persists, check Troubleshooting or Discord

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Settings That Matter

• Automated vs manual reviews and follow-up cadence
• Ignore patterns and base branches in scope
• Custom rules and cross-file analysis
• Review filters: minimum severity and whether they apply to Fossy Rules
• File limits and timeouts

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Tips

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