GitHub Autopilot — Code Review & PR Triage

What Engineers Waste Time On

Reading a 400-line PR diff to understand what it does before reviewing it
Writing the same comments on the same patterns across different PRs
Triaging issues with no labels, no priority, no reproduction steps
Writing release notes from a list of commit messages

All of this is pattern recognition. Claude is very good at pattern recognition.

What This Builds

PR Summariser — For any open pull request, Claude writes a plain-English summary of what changed, why it changed, and what the reviewer should pay close attention to. Paste this into the PR description.

First-pass Reviewer — Claude reads the diff and leaves structured comments on: missing error handling, potential edge cases, security concerns, and test coverage gaps.

Issue Triager — For any new issue, Claude assigns a priority label (P0/P1/P2), identifies if it's a duplicate, asks for missing reproduction steps, and suggests which part of the codebase is likely responsible.

Release Notes Generator — Point Claude at your merged PRs since last release. It writes changelogs in user-facing language (not "fix: resolve null pointer in UserService" but "Fixed a crash that occurred when logging out without an active session").

MCP Servers Required

| Server | Purpose |

|---|---|

| GitHub MCP | Full access to repos, PRs, issues, commits, branches |

| Filesystem MCP (optional) | Read local code for deeper analysis |

Setup


{
  "mcpServers": {
    "github": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-github"],
      "env": {
        "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "ghp_your_token_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Token permissions needed:

repo (full repo access) or scoped to specific repos
read:org if you want cross-org visibility

The Prompts

PR Summary


Summarise PR #[number] in the [owner/repo] repo.

Include:
1. One-line TL;DR
2. What changed and why (based on diff + PR description)
3. Files changed and their purpose
4. What reviewers should focus on
5. Any obvious risks or missing tests

Format it as a PR description update I can paste in.

Code Review


Do a first-pass code review of PR #[number] in [owner/repo].

Flag:
- Missing error handling or null checks
- Security concerns (SQL injection, XSS, exposed secrets)
- Missing or insufficient tests
- Performance concerns for any loops or DB queries
- Anything that doesn't match the repo's existing patterns

For each finding, give: file + line range, the issue, and a suggested fix.
Don't repeat things the PR author already flagged.

Issue Triage


Triage issue #[number] in [owner/repo].

1. Is this a duplicate? Search open and closed issues.
2. What priority? P0 (production down), P1 (major), P2 (minor), P3 (nice to have)
3. What information is missing? (steps to reproduce, environment, expected vs actual)
4. Which part of the codebase is likely responsible?
5. Draft a comment asking for any missing info.

Release Notes


Generate release notes for [owner/repo] from [date/tag] to now.

Rules:
- Write for end users, not developers
- Group by: New Features | Bug Fixes | Performance | Breaking Changes
- Skip internal refactors, dependency bumps, and dev tooling changes
- Keep each entry to one sentence
- Flag anything that's a breaking change prominently

Integrating Into Your Workflow

Option A — On-demand: Run these prompts manually when you open a PR or issue.

Option B — Morning routine: Combine with the Daily Briefing playbook — ask Claude to summarise all PRs opened in the last 24 hours as part of your morning standup prep.

Option C — As part of CI: Use the Claude API (not Claude Desktop) to auto-comment PR summaries when a PR is opened.

What Claude Won't Replace

Business logic errors (it doesn't know your product requirements)
Architectural decisions that require context from 6 months of codebase history
Performance issues that only appear at scale

Use it for the mechanical first pass. Use your engineers for the judgement calls.

GitHub Autopilot — Automated Code Review & PR Triage

Free

Playbook Content