Automatically classify and route your pull requests based on the content of the code. Add estimated review time labels, route PRs to code experts for review, and build custom workflows that flag security and quality risks to maximize developer efficiency.
gitStream allows your engineers to automatically…
👩💻 Auto-assign expert reviewers
⏱️ Add estimated time to review tags to pull requests
🚦 Segment pull requests by risk to the repo (low risk vs. medium risk vs. high risk) w/ the option of auto-approving low-risk PRs
👮 Automatically flag security risks for additional scrutiny
💡 After analyzing the work of thousands of dev teams and millions of branches, my team at LinearB discovered the No. 1 undiagnosed problem in programming… Pull requests are the top bottleneck in the development process 💡
🚨How bad is the state of pull requests 🚨...
⏰ The average cycle time for a piece of work was 7 days.
😴 Half of all PRs were idle for 50% of their lifespan.
📉 Cycle time doubled when pull requests went from 100 lines of code to 200 lines of code.
The inefficiency in pull requests and code reviews turned out to have four major root causes…
1. There is typically no formal process for getting pull requests (PR) assigned.
2. No standardization or best practices guidance for PR size.
3. Teams treat all PRs with equal importance despite their different risk levels.
4. A total lack of visibility into PR context or how long it will take to review (until it’s opened).
With the problem and its causes identified, our team went about ways to use automation to solve it. We developed a free tool called gitStream and released it to help streamline workflows between coding and deployment.
⚡How to have gitStream running in 2 minutes⚡
gitStream is easily installed as an app on either GitHub or GitLab. For more details, see our docs! https://docs.gitstream.cm/
❓FAQs❓
🗣️ "Is gitStream just available on GitHub?"
Nope! A beta version of gitStream is available on GitLab!
🗣️ "What permissions do I need to install gitStream?"
You will need permissions to install applications in your repos. For more information, simply choose your git provider…
GitHub - https://docs.gitstream.cm/github...
GitLab - https://docs.gitstream.cm/gitlab...
🗣️ "Is my code secure?"
Like other CI/CD automation, the source is being scanned in the repo and isn't shared with external services. Only metadata that affects the workflow is shared to allow rule based automation.
🗣️ "What do I do after installation?"
Once installed, you can add your own rules by editing the .cm file.
🗣️ "Why is it closed source?"
gitStream is growing and still in its inception phase. We're planning to open up the tool once it matures.
🗣️ "What makes this different than GitHub Actions?"
gitStream is not a CI tool, rather it helps reduce the amount of time spent waiting on code reviews. Stay tuned for new gitStream features that let you selectively trigger GitHub Actions based on the contents of the PR.
For more info: https://linearb.io/blog/gitstrea...
🗣️ Is this similar to CODEOWNERS?
Yes, but gitStream offers a much deeper level of customization to assign reviewers based on things like expertise level.
Read more: https://linearb.io/blog/its-time...
🗣️ "What tools does gitStream integrate with?"
We have a growing list of integrations including SonarCloud, Jit, Jira that you can find over on the docs. We have plans to grow this list substantially over the next few months.
See more here: https://docs.gitstream.cm/integr...
🗣️ "How do you configure automations?"
gitStream automations are defined via YAML and Jinja2 files that are placed inside your git repo. This provides a flexible framework for customizing gitStream to meet your individual needs.
🗣️ "Do you have an example rules library?"
We do! https://docs.gitstream.cm/examples/
🗣️ "Can gitStream automatically request changes for deprecated components?"
We can! Here’s how: https://docs.gitstream.cm/automa...
@gitstream This is AWESOME, cutting edge and will changed the way you think about PRs
Report
@gitstreamer
Thanks for this relevant information you shared
Report
@gitstreamer@eliza_wright1 a bitbucket integration will be coming this year, we've had quite a bit of demand for it already and we want to fill that need.
Report
I can already think of some ways this tool would help my team. Specifically, I’m wondering if I could use gitStream to detect when someone puts an important rule in a CSS file and automatically request that they change it. I checked the library but didn’t see anything.
Report
@adam_noble2 Hello my name is Ben, and I lead developer relations at Linearb. This is brilliant, and I'm surprised I hadn’t already thought about that! This is the exact type of problem we’re trying to solve, so I created a PR to add this example to the library, I'll update here when it's merged. Thanks for the suggestion!
@hannah_hughes1 we release new features just about every week. You can get updates by subscribing to the announcement post in the gitStream GitHub repo.
Report
Actually used the beta at my old company and dug it, but I didn’t install it. Who do I ask to look into it on my new team? ~100 devs spread over 5 teams.
@monoshitsu1974 You should probably look for the one that take care of your CI process, or sets up your GitHub actions. It's 2 minutes to install and you can start by checking how it works on a single repo.
PR review is so broken. When GitHub tho? and any plans to add GPT to the reviews? Would love some low key PR reviews from a GPT bot. Just to cover the basics.
Report
@sentry_co We're building new integrations capabilities that will enable gitStream to integrate with a broad range of third-party tools. You can get product feature updates like this by subscribing to this GitHub Discussion: https://github.com/linear-b/gits...
Report
I mentioned this in my review but I was about to join a buddy who wanted to build the exact same thing. LOL. As I said in my review, great minds think alike!
Report
This tool sounds really helpful! Glad to hear you can automate the PR process and take away some of the manual effort
Report
Is there any industry this works best for? At a big company with an insane amount of hurdles for getting anything new adopted.
Report
@porsha_wendy DevOps and platform engineering teams seem the most interested in adopting gitStream, but any team that wants to reduce software development cycle time should find value in gitStream.
Great tool for automating prs/merge requests. There are some quick win use-cases on the docs for routing, auto-approving merges, and following security best practices.
gitStream is incredibly useful for any dev team looking to improve the workflow of their PRs - including assigning expert reviewers, speeding up PR reviews, and more.
gitStream
gitStream
DiffSense