Our Experience with CodeRabbit: A Game-Changer in Automated Code Review

A quick run through of the benefits we encountered testing out Coderabbit as part of our code review process

Over the past week, the team at Loop has been exploring the capabilities of CodeRabbit, an automated code review tool, I’ve long sought to enhance our code review process and catch those elusive errors that human reviewers might miss.

Initially, I was hesitant about the $15/user/month price tag, even though it’s one of the more affordable options available. However, after demonstrating its potential benefits to our business team, I was pleasantly surprised. They found the cost to be quite reasonable and encouraged us to proceed with the subscription.

Key Features and Benefits

Detailed Summaries:

One of the standout features of CodeRabbit is its comprehensive summaries of code changes. It categorizes updates into sections like “New Features,” “Bug Fixes,” “Tests,” and “Chores.” This organization likely leverages commit prefixes, especially since we use commitlint.

Walkthrough Comments:

CodeRabbit’s walkthrough comments offer brief summaries of changes on a per-file basis. When necessary, it includes precise flow diagrams, which are accurate enough to be saved and used in documentation.

Impressive Code Reviews

During our testing, CodeRabbit proved its worth by identifying a mistake in a DTO for one of our endpoints. A developer had mistakenly set “max_weight” as a Boolean instead of a number.

Additionally, it recommended using the “@IsLatitude” and “@IsLongitude” decorators from “class-validator” instead of “@IsNumber,” which was a validation improvement I hadn’t considered.

The tool also provided valuable suggestions to enhance readability, improve error messages for clarity, and optimise performance and billing for some of our Firebase calls.

Balancing Cost and Value

I found myself weighing the tool’s cost against its utility. In a business context, what may seem expensive on a personal level can be justified by the efficiency and quality improvements it brings to the team.

Final Thoughts

Overall, CodeRabbit is definitely worth a try for your team. It offers a full range of features for a 7-day trial period, which should be ample time to gauge its value within your workflows, assuming your team pushes code regularly.

In conclusion, our experience with CodeRabbit has been overwhelmingly positive, and it’s a tool we’re excited to continue using to improve our code review process.

Check them out at https://coderabbit.ai