Octopus: AI-Powered Automated Code Review for GitHub & Bitbucket

4 min read Original article ↗

AI-powered code review automation

Your AI code reviewer
that never sleeps

Octopus reviews every pull request with deep context awareness.
Catch bugs, enforce standards, and ship with confidence.

Get Started FreeView on GitHub

How it works

Three steps to better reviews

Connect your repos, and Octopus starts reviewing automatically.

Connect GitHub

Install the Octopus GitHub App and select repositories to monitor.

AI Learns Your Code

Octopus indexes your codebase, understands patterns and architecture.

Reviews on Autopilot

Every new PR gets an instant, context-aware review automatically.

Install the CLI

Review PRs, chat with your codebase, and run AI agents from your terminal.

# Works on macOS & Linux. Installs everything.

$curl -fsSL https://octopus-review.ai/install.sh | bash

Works on macOS, Windows & Linux. The one-liner installs Node.js and everything else for you.

View full CLI documentation

Under the Hood

The Review Engine

9 phases, fully automated. From webhook to PR comment in under 2 minutes.

Features

Everything you need
to ship & review.

From RAG-powered chat to CLI tooling — everything happens through a single platform.

RAG Chat

Ask questions about your codebase. Vector search + reranking delivers precise, context-aware answers grounded in your actual code.

How does the auth middleware validate tokens?

The middleware extracts the JWT from the Authorization header, validates it using jose.jwtVerify(), checks token expiry, and attaches the decoded user to context.

auth.ts:12jwt.ts:45types.ts:8

What happens if the token is expired?

...

CLI Tool

Review PRs, query code, and manage repos from your terminal.

$ octopus pr review 42

Fetching diff for PR #42...
Reviewing 3 changed files with 847 context chunks...

auth.ts:12 — Consider rate limiting

middleware.ts:8 — Good error handling

$ octopus repo status

Indexed · 4,832 chunks · Last review: 2m ago

Codebase Indexing

Chunks, embeds, and indexes your entire codebase for instant retrieval.

Chunking 1,247 files (1500 chars, 200 overlap)

Knowledge Base

Feed your org's standards, docs, and conventions. Reviews get smarter over time.

Team Sharing

Organization-level config, shared knowledge, and team-wide review standards.

Team MembersAcme Corp

Shared review config across 8 repositories

Analytics

Track review quality, token usage, cost per repo, and developer velocity.

Weekly OverviewMar 10 — Mar 16

Open Source

Fully open source,
built in the open

100% open source under the MIT license. Inspect the code, self-host on your own infrastructure, or contribute.

Core codebase goes public on March 23, 2026 — 15:00 UTC

MIT Licensed

Use it however you want — personal, commercial, or enterprise.

Community Driven

PRs welcome. Report bugs, request features, or build integrations.

Self-Host Ready

Deploy on your own servers. Your code never leaves your infrastructure.

Star us on GitHub

Blog

From the blog

Engineering insights and lessons from building Octopus.

View all posts

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Quick answers to the most common questions about Octopus.

What is Octopus?
Octopus is an AI-powered code review tool that connects to GitHub and Bitbucket, indexes your codebase for deep context, and automatically reviews every pull request — posting findings as inline comments with severity levels.

How does the automated review work?
When a pull request is opened, Octopus fetches the diff, retrieves relevant context from your indexed codebase using vector search, and sends it to an LLM (Claude or OpenAI) for analysis. Findings are posted directly on the PR with severity ratings: Critical, Major, Minor, Suggestion, and Tip.

Which programming languages are supported?
Octopus is language-agnostic. It reviews any text-based code file — TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, Java, C#, Ruby, PHP, Swift, Kotlin, and more. Since it uses LLMs for analysis, it understands the semantics and patterns of virtually any language.

Is my source code safe?
Yes. Your code is processed in-memory and never stored permanently. Only vector embeddings are persisted for search. You can also self-host Octopus on your own infrastructure so your code never leaves your servers.

Does Octopus replace human reviewers?
No. Octopus augments your team's review process. It catches bugs, security issues, and style inconsistencies so your human reviewers can focus on architecture, design decisions, and business logic.

Is Octopus free to use?
Yes. Octopus is open source under the MIT license and free to self-host. The cloud service includes free credits to get started, with a credit-based model for continued use. You can also bring your own API keys to use your existing AI provider billing.

View all FAQs

Ready to transform your
code review workflow?

Open source, free forever. Set up in under 2 minutes.

Get Started — It's Free

No credit card required. Self-host or use our cloud.

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