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Best practices

Rolling out to your team

Introduce HeyDeer in stages, and let it gate merges only once your team trusts its results.

Before you start

A workspace admin changes the settings in each stage; anyone with write access can request reviews. See Workspace members.

All plans include monthly credits. A new workspace starts with 1,000 credits in its first month on the Free plan. Every plan, including Free, can add credits at a base rate of $10 per 1,000 credits.

Credit and payment emails go to the address in Workspace settings → Notifications. Set it to one your team reads, such as a team address; see Notification email.

Stages

  1. Optional: try HeyDeer before your team sees it. Under Workspace settings → Review rules → Publish results, turn off Publish GitHub check and Post review comments on the pull request. Request reviews with Start a review, read the results on the Reviews page, and turn both options back on before the next stage.
  2. Try it on a few pull requests. When HeyDeer asks after setup, turn off Review pull requests automatically so it reviews only on request. Then comment @heydeer review on a handful of open pull requests of different kinds, and compare the findings with your reviewers’.
  3. Fill the gaps you saw. Add only what those reviews showed you need: coding conventions in AGENTS.md, requirements in repository checks, and priorities in review instructions. See What HeyDeer reads.
  4. Turn on automatic reviews for one or two repositories: in Repositories, select them and then Change schedule. Once their reviews look right, set the workspace schedule in Workspace settings → Review rules → When to review.
  5. Move to the setup for your team. Require the HeyDeer Review check and decide on automatic approval. See Teams without code review or Teams with human reviewers.
  6. Set spending controls. On a paid plan, turn on auto-reload and set a usage limit. See Auto-reload and usage limits.
  7. Tell the team how to work with HeyDeer. Share the PR comment commands and how to decline a finding.

If a pull request isn’t reviewed when you expect, see Troubleshooting.

When to move on

Move to the next stage when recent reviews show all of these:

  • Your team acts on most findings.
  • Declined findings don’t share a pattern you could fix with review instructions or a repository check. If they do, see Reducing noise.
  • Reviews finish without review notes, such as a repository check that didn’t run.

After a few weeks, reread recent reviews. Move guidance to where it belongs, and remove instructions and checks that never change a review.