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Welcome to Hephaestus

Hephaestus reviews the pull requests, issues, and code reviews your team already writes against the engineering practices you choose. It gives each developer feedback that cites their work and names a next step.

Feedback appears on the work itself, on each developer’s private practice page, and in a conversation. There, developers can ask why, ask for an example, or disagree. Workspace admins can approve feedback before it appears on the work.

You work in GitHub or GitLab as usual. You can ask Hephaestus about your feedback and recent work.

Start here​

Getting started takes you from sign-in to your first feedback. It also sets your AI choice, which decides which AI features work for you. You can change your AI choice later in User settings.

Practice feedback​

Read feedback about a pull request, merge request, or issue. Each piece names its practice and points to evidence in your work. Hephaestus records observations before it prepares feedback, and a review failure creates no claim about your work. Feedback on the work waits for a workspace admin’s approval by default. Practice feedback explains how to read it, respond, and ask for another review.

Practice profile​

Your Practice profile is the home page of a workspace that reviews practices. It shows how your work stands, the evidence behind it, and your private feedback. A workspace that does not review practices opens on Activity.

Conversations with Hephaestus​

Ask Hephaestus about feedback, a review request, or a next step for your work. Hephaestus can use the workspace context it’s allowed to see, so you do not need to repeat every detail. Ask Hephaestus explains how to start in the web app or Slack.

Activity​

Find pull requests that need your review, check your assigned issues, or copy recent work for a standup. Workspace activity shows everyone with work in the workspace or one team, in a table you can sort by each count. Activity counts and lists your team’s work. Activity explains both pages.

Chrome extension​

Use the optional Chrome extension to see practice reviews on GitHub or GitLab work pages.

Workspaces and connected services​

A workspace holds one team’s repositories, members, practices, integrations, and settings. Your connected GitHub, GitLab, Slack, and Outline integrations supply project activity, team conversations, and documentation. Hephaestus uses Slack channel messages only when you allow it. This context can help Hephaestus understand the work.

Workspace admins can:

  • Connect GitHub or GitLab repositories and keep each team’s data separate.
  • Adopt practices from the instance catalog and customize them for the project.
  • Choose the AI model and set a monthly spending cap.
  • Manage members, teams, and integrations.

Workspace basics explains workspaces and their settings.

Your data and privacy​

Your data in Hephaestus explains what connected services share and how AI uses it. It also explains how long copies stay and how to request access, correction, or erasure. This includes people who have never signed in.

Terms used in this guide​

  • Practice: a way of working that a review can observe. Examples are changes that are easy to review and explanations of their purpose.
  • Practice feedback: feedback on how you apply engineering practices, with evidence from your project work.
  • Ask Hephaestus: the area where you talk about your work in the web app.
  • Workspace: the repositories, members, teams, workspace practices, and settings for one group.
  • Workspace admin: a member who configures a workspace. An instance admin operates the whole deployment.

The Admin guide covers running the instance. The Contributor guide covers development.