Shaping the review experience: lean vs verbose

The review experience is shaped by how multiple configuration settings work together. By tuning severity thresholds, display mode, limits on findings, verbosity, and ignore rules, you can make reviews feel more lean or more verbose.

Lean review experience

A lean review experience focuses on surfacing only the most critical issues and minimizing noise.

It is typically achieved by combining:

• Higher severity thresholds for inline comments

• Fewer findings shown by default

• Summary-focused feedback

• More aggressive ignore rules (for PRs, files, tickets, or authors)

Example configuration:

# Only show the most critical issues inline
inline_comments_severity_threshold = 3

# Show feedback primarily in the summary
comments_location_policy = "summary"

# Ignore low-signal PRs and generated code
[config]
ignore_pr_labels = ["chore", "skip-review"]
ignore_language_framework = ["protobuf"]

This setup highlights only issues that must be addressed before merging.

Verbose review experience

A verbose review experience provides broader coverage and richer context.

It is typically achieved by combining:

• Lower severity thresholds for inline comments

• More findings shown by default

• Feedback shown both inline and in summary

• No ignore rules

Example configuration:

# Show multiple severity levels inline
inline_comments_severity_threshold = 1

# Show feedback both inline and in summary
comments_location_policy = "both"

This setup is useful during onboarding, when working with new codebases, or when teams want deeper insight and guidance.