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DevBird automatically manages pull request reviews and updates, responding to feedback and fixing issues without manual intervention.

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The automated PR workflow

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1. PR Creation

When DevBird creates a pull request:
  • PR is opened for review
  • Task link comment is added
  • Task prompt comment is added (if enabled)
  • CI checks begin running

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2. Code Review

Team members review the PR normally:
  • Leave review comments
  • Request changes
  • Approve changes

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3. Automatic Response

When a review is submitted, DevBird:
  • Detects the review via GitHub webhook
  • Converts PR to draft status (except for simple approvals)
  • Triggers a workflow to address the feedback
  • AI agent analyzes the review and makes changes
  • Pushes updates to the PR branch
  • CI checks run again

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4. CI Monitoring

DevBird watches CI check status:
  • When all checks complete
  • If any checks fail
  • Automatically triggers fix workflow
  • AI agent investigates and fixes failures
  • Updates are pushed to the PR

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5. Ready for Merge

When everything passes:
  • All CI checks pass
  • All review feedback addressed
  • PR is automatically undrafted (if enabled)
  • Ready for final approval and merge

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PR comments

Always added to every DevBird PR: 
🤖 This pull request has been linked to DevBird Task #123

View the task details and manage the automated development
workflow in DevBird.
Provides:
  • Link to the DevBird task
  • Task ID reference
  • Context for reviewers

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Task Prompt Comment

Optional, enabled by default. Shows the original task prompt in PR comments to provide context for reviewers. For details about this feature including benefits and how to configure it, see Enable Prompt Comments in the settings documentation.

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Review types and behavior

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Changes Requested

When reviewer requests changes:
  1. PR converts to draft
  2. DevBird workflow triggered
  3. AI analyzes review comments
  4. Changes are made and pushed
  5. PR remains draft until CI passes

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Comments Only

When reviewer adds comments (not requesting changes):
  1. PR converts to draft
  2. DevBird workflow triggered
  3. AI addresses comments
  4. Updates pushed to PR
  5. PR remains draft until CI passes

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Approvals

When reviewer approves without comments:
  1. PR stays as-is (not converted to draft)
  2. No workflow triggered
  3. PR ready for merge (if CI passes)

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Bot Reviews

When a bot account submits a review, behavior depends on the “Auto-apply Bot Reviews” setting. See Settings for details.

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Reviewer permissions

For security, DevBird verifies that reviewers have appropriate permissions before triggering workflows:

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Write Access Requirement

For human reviewers:
  • Must have Write (Push) or Admin access to the repository
  • Verified via GitHub API permission check
  • Reviews from users without write access are silently ignored
  • All permission checks are logged for security auditing
For bot reviewers:
  • Exempt from permission checks when “Auto-apply Bot Reviews” is enabled
  • Use GitHub App installation token for authentication
  • Bypasses individual permission requirements

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Why write access is required

This security measure prevents:
  • Unauthorized users from triggering workflows via PR reviews
  • Potential abuse of compute resources
  • Unauthorized code execution in your workflows

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Troubleshooting permission issues

If your reviews aren’t triggering workflows:
  1. Verify you have Write or Admin access to the repository
  2. Check that you’ve connected the repository in DevBird
  3. Ensure the repository has DevBird webhook configured
  4. Review webhook delivery logs for permission errors
Note: Read-only collaborators cannot trigger DevBird workflows through PR reviews, even if they’ve connected the repository.

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Draft status during updates

DevBird converts PRs to draft during automated updates to:
  • Signal work is in progress
  • Prevent accidental merges during changes
  • Avoid confusing reviewers
  • Indicate AI is actively working
Exception: Simple approvals don’t trigger draft conversion.

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Automatic CI fixes

When CI checks fail:

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Detection

DevBird monitors:
  • check_run webhooks
  • check_suite webhooks
  • Waits for all checks to complete
  • Identifies failing checks

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Fix Workflow

If failures detected:
  1. Creates fix workflow execution
  2. Converts PR to draft
  3. Generates detailed fix prompt with:
    • Original task prompt
    • List of failing checks
    • Links to check details
  4. AI investigates failures using GitHub CLI
  5. Fixes are made and pushed
  6. CI runs again

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Rate Limiting

To prevent excessive fix attempts:
  • Maximum 1 fix attempt per commit
  • Tracked by commit SHA
  • New commits allow new fix attempts

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Auto-undraft feature

When enabled (default), DevBird automatically converts draft PRs to ready-for-review when all CI checks pass. For details about this feature including when to enable/disable it and configuration options, see Auto-undraft PR in the settings documentation.

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GitHub Ruleset recommendations

To optimize DevBird’s automated workflow, we recommend configuring GitHub Rulesets to protect your repository while allowing DevBird to work efficiently. Branch protection rules:
  • Require pull request reviews - Ensure human oversight of AI-generated code
  • Require status checks to pass - Enforce CI validation before merging
  • Allow force pushes: Enable for DevBird bot - Let DevBird clean up commit history after addressing reviews
  • Allow deletions: Disable - Protect branches from accidental deletion
Why allow force pushes for DevBird: When DevBird addresses review feedback or fixes CI failures, it may need to force push to maintain a clean commit history. This is safe because:
  • Only the DevBird bot account has this permission
  • Changes still go through PR review
  • CI checks must still pass
  • Human approval required for merge
Setting up the ruleset:
  1. Go to your repository settings
  2. Navigate to Rules → Rulesets
  3. Create a new ruleset for your target branches (e.g., main, develop)
  4. Configure branch protections as above
  5. Under “Bypass list,” add the DevBird bot account for force push permissions
This configuration ensures code quality while allowing DevBird to manage PRs efficiently without manual intervention.

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Best practices

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For Reviewers

Be specific in feedback: 
Please add error handling for the null case on line 45
Better than: 
Needs error handling
Reference specific code: 
In UserService.authenticateUser(), add rate limiting
to prevent brute force attacks
Provide context: 
This approach won't work with our existing session
management. Please use the SessionManager class instead.

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For PR Authors

Monitor automated updates:
  • Check that DevBird addressed your feedback
  • Review changes made by AI
  • Add manual updates if needed
Collaborate with AI:
  • Request updates through DevBird
  • Let AI handle repetitive fixes
  • Make final manual adjustments
Keep PRs focused:
  • Single responsibility per PR
  • Easier for AI to maintain
  • Faster review cycles

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Manual PR updates

You can also manually request PR updates:
  1. Go to DevBird task details
  2. Find the PR you want to update
  3. Click Update PR
  4. Enter update instructions
  5. DevBird converts PR to draft and makes changes
Use manual updates when:
  • Review feedback is complex
  • Need additional features
  • Want to refine the implementation

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Applying reviews from other reviewers

You can apply review feedback from other pull requests using the Reflect command:
  1. Find the review comment you want to apply.
  2. Copy the comment’s direct link (e.g., https://github.com/delinoio/devbird-example/pull/123#issuecomment-337041341)
  3. On the current PR, submit a review with “Request changes”
  4. In the review message, use: Reflect https://github.com/delinoio/devbird-example/pull/123#issuecomment-337041341
  5. DevBird will analyze the linked review comment and apply those changes to the current PR
This is useful when:
  • Applying reviews from other people

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Troubleshooting

For common PR review issues and solutions, see the PR Review Troubleshooting guide.

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Next steps