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Welcome to Hephaestus

Learn from the work you're already doing. Hephaestus is an open-source AI mentor for software teams. It reads the work you already do — issues, pull requests, reviews and the discussion around them — against the practices your project cares about, then says what went well, what could be better, and a way to get there. Ask it why, push back, or work out the next step together.

This guide is for developers who use Hephaestus and workspace admins who set it up. Deployment and development documentation live in the Admin Guide and Contributor Guide.

What Hephaestus offers​

Practice feedback​

  • Uses AI to read pull requests, merge requests, issues and the conversation around them against the practices configured for your workspace.
  • Names the practice each piece of feedback came from, and points to the evidence in your work.
  • Says what went well as well as what could be better, and suggests a way to get there.
  • Reaches you where you will see it: on the work itself, on your own practice pages, or in your next conversation with Hephaestus.

Talking it through​

  • In chat Hephaestus goes by Heph.
  • Draws on recent project activity, the feedback you have received, team conversations, and documentation as context.
  • Available in the web app and, when connected, in a Slack direct message.

Project context​

Connected GitHub, GitLab, Slack, and Outline integrations provide project activity, team conversations, and documentation that can help Hephaestus understand the work.

Workspace management​

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

Optional recognition features​

Workspace admins can enable achievements, leagues, and a weekly leaderboard of review activity. A weekly Slack digest can also be configured. These features are separate from practice feedback. See Leaderboard for details.

Terms used in this guide​

  • Engineering practice: an observable way of working, such as keeping a change reviewable or explaining why it is needed.
  • Practice feedback: feedback about one or more engineering practices, tied to evidence from software project work.
  • Heph: what Hephaestus is called in the chat, in the web app or Slack.
  • Workspace: the repositories, members, teams, practice catalog, and settings for one group.
  • Workspace admin: a member who configures a workspace. An instance admin operates the whole deployment.

Quick start​

  1. Sign in with one of the providers offered by your deployment.
  2. Choose a workspace you belong to.
  3. Work normally in a connected GitHub or GitLab repository.
  4. Open feedback from a contribution when practice reviews are enabled.
  5. Ask a follow-up question about any feedback you receive.

Continue with Getting started for a tour of the current navigation.