Best practices

Reducing noise

If HeyDeer posts more than your team wants to read, find the kind of noise below and apply its fix. The first rows change the most for the least effort.

Fixes

Noise	Fix	Details
Too many findings you would not act on	Switch Feedback scope to Concise. To compare scopes first, open a recent review in HeyDeer and use Preview feedback scope.	Feedback scope
Comments on generated code	Mark the files `linguist-generated` in `.gitattributes` on the base branch.	What HeyDeer reads
Reviews of bot or throwaway pull requests	Add automatic review filters, such as Author account is none of Bot, or PR labels is none of `skip-review`.	Review filters
A finding you decided not to fix	Reply with the reason, or resolve the thread. A decision by someone with write access stops HeyDeer raising it again.	Follow-up reviews
A kind of comment nobody acts on	In review instructions or AGENTS.md, say what not to comment on, narrowly and with a reason. Avoid broad rules such as “Don’t comment on performance”.	Writing review guidance
A check firing on files it is not about	Narrow its `files` patterns and exclude tests or fixtures.	Writing effective checks
Follow-up reviews on every push	Keep Review only new changes on, and set a Maximum automatic reviews per PR or use Once per PR.	Automatic reviews
A long pull request conversation	Keep Resolve addressed HeyDeer threads on, or turn off Post review comments on the pull request so the HeyDeer Review check carries the review.	Publishing results

Examples

Generated files in .gitattributes:

src/generated/** linguist-generated
*.pb.go linguist-generated=true

Narrow rules about what to leave alone:

## Leave alone

- Files under scripts/one-off/. They run once by hand and are deleted.
- Missing input validation in internal/admin-cli/. It only runs
  locally with trusted input.