Reading a review
HeyDeer posts its findings as a GitHub pull request review, with an inline comment on the lines each finding is about.
What HeyDeer posts
The review on GitHub has no summary. The summary and the complete list of findings are in The HeyDeer Review check and in HeyDeer.
The review comment holds only review warnings, additional findings and any approval reason. A review with nothing to post adds no comment. If the review is too long for GitHub, HeyDeer leaves some findings out and adds a View all findings in HeyDeer link.
HeyDeer approves a pull request only when Automatic approval is on, and doesn’t repeat a problem the discussion already raised. See Follow-up reviews.
With Post review comments on the pull request off, only the check carries the review. See Publishing results.
How a finding is laid out
| Part | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Heading | Severity and title, for example HIGH: Retry loop never stops on a 404. |
| Explanation | What the problem is and what it causes. |
| Suggested fix | How to fix it, in words. |
| Suggested change | An exact edit, as a GitHub suggestion or a read-only diff. |
| Check | The repository check that raised it. |
| Affected code | A link to the lines, when the comment isn’t on them. |
Severity is Critical, High, Medium or Low and reflects impact, separate from how confident HeyDeer is. To post fewer or more findings, change the Feedback scope, which filters by confidence.
A suggestion you can commit appears only when the comment sits exactly on the lines it replaces; elsewhere the change is a read-only diff. HeyDeer never runs your formatter or tests, so read a suggestion before committing it.
GitHub accepts inline comments only on lines in the diff. A finding about other code, such as an unchanged caller the change breaks, goes in the review comment under Additional findings.
Review warnings
When something limited a review, the review comment, the check and HeyDeer show Review warnings.
| Warning | What to do |
|---|---|
| Lower-confidence findings were omitted | A review keeps its 30 most confident findings. Address them, then request another review. |
| Only the first 10 checks were selected | At most 10 repository checks apply, in file name order. Narrow their file patterns. |
This pull request changes .agents/, and the new check configuration is invalid | Fix the configuration before merging, or HeyDeer can’t review pull requests for that branch. |
| Some findings or thread assessments were invalid or incomplete | Request another review for a complete result. |
A review with a warning is incomplete: HeyDeer doesn’t approve it, its check doesn’t report success, and the next review covers the whole pull request.
Review language
Review language sets the language of findings, summaries, warnings and HeyDeer’s replies in its threads. Choose English (the default), Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil) or German. Code and file paths stay as they are.
Set it in Organization settings → Review rules, under How to review, or in a repository’s Review rules.
The review in HeyDeer
Every review has a page in HeyDeer. Open it from Reviews, from the check’s Details link, or from View all findings in HeyDeer. It shows what triggered the review, whether it covered New changes or the Whole PR, the Credits used, every finding within the feedback scope, and concerns listed under Declined in discussion.
Preview feedback scope shows which findings each feedback scope would keep, without changing anything. Someone with write access can stop a review with Cancel review; credits already used aren’t returned.