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CRken User Manual

⚠️ Note: This documentation section assumes that you (or your project maintainer or DevOps) have already integrated CRken into your GitLab project. If not, do it via Webhooks in your project's settings.

🚀 Getting started

CRken reviews code patches in Merge Requests and adds review notes as comments to the files. Once a new Merge Request is created or code in the existing Merge Request has been updated, GitLab triggers CRken to review the code patch in the Merge Request.

To see CRken in action, follow this simple steps:

  1. Let's assume that you already have a git branch named main and it contains some source code files. If not, just commit your code into the GitLab project's repository.
  2. Create a new branch, for example, develop.
  3. Under the develop branch, modify some source code files (or add new files) and push it to the repository.
  4. Open a new Merge Request with the develop branch as the source and main as the target.
  5. Navigate to the "Changes" tab and scroll to the file of your interest.

changes

📄 Conventions

  • CRken reviews code patches in Merge Requests only.
  • CRken adds review notes as comments to the files.
  • If the file already contains comments from CRken and has not been changed since the last review, CRken does not review the code patch for such file again.
  • If the file has been changed since the last review, CRken will delete or hide its outdated comment:
    • The outdated comment will be simply removed if there are no replies to CRken's comments.
    • The outdated comment will be folded if there are replies to CRken's comments.

⚙️ Configuration via repository configuration file

CRKen has a flexible settings system that can be managed in various ways. One of the most convenient ways is through the .crken.yml configuration file in the repository root.

Using the .crken.yml configuration file in the repository, you can configure the following project-specific parameters:

  • model — AI model. Default value: gpt-4o (when using CRKen SaaS cloud version) or ollama/codestral:22b (when using CRKen on-premises installed on your server).
  • ollama-host — Ollama server address.
  • openai-host — OpenAI server address. Default value: https://api.openai.com.
  • openai-api-key — Key for accessing OpenAI API. Default value: empty string.
  • target — Regular expression for determining files to be checked. Default value: \.(py|c|h|cpp|hpp|cs|java|kt|swift|php|go|sh|(j|t)sx?)$.
  • target-extra — Additional regular expression for determining files to be checked (useful when you don't want to completely override target, but only extend it). Default value: empty string.
  • target-exclude — Regular expression for excluding files from checking (useful when you don't want to completely override target or target-extra). Default value: empty string.
  • language — Language in which CRKen will write comments. Default value: English.
  • instructions — Additional instructions for passing additional context to the AI model or adjusting the code review process. Default value: empty string.

Example configuration file:

.crken.yml
model: 'gpt-4o'
ollama-host: 'http://my-ai-server:11434'
openai-host: 'https://api.openai.com'
openai-api-key: 'sk-my-openai-api-key'
target: '\.(py|c|h|cpp|hpp|cs|java|kt|swift|php|go|sh|(j|t)sx?)$'
target-extra: '\.hs$'
target-exclude: '\.sh$'
language: 'English'
instructions: 'Do not focus on code style, highlight bugs only.'

For more detailed information about all parameters and configuration methods, you can refer to the documentation sections CRken GitLab Integration: Configuration.

👉 Additional instructions

You can provide additional instructions as text to give the AI model more context or adjust the code review process.

Ways to provide additional instructions:

  • Key instructions in the .crken.yml configuration file in your repository root. Example:
    .crken.yml
    instructions: "Do not focus on code style, highlight only errors."
  • In file or MR comments along with the /crken keyword (only works when integrated via webhook with "Comments" events enabled). Example: 
    /crken Check only security issues.

▶️ Manual review initiation

You can initiate the review process manually by leaving comments on your Merge Request if Comments events has been enabled for the webhook. Comments that trigger the review must contain the special keyword /crken.

Pass extra instructions via comments

Along with the keyword, you can provide additional information to give the AI model more context or to adjust the review process. For example:

  • /crken Do not focus on code style; highlight bugs only.
  • /crken Review for security issues only.
  • /crken Provide short comments, pointing out a maximum of 5 issues.

Review single file

Leave a comment on a specific file in your Merge Request to initiate the review of that file. In this case, any settings that define the target set of files will be ignored.

trigger the certain file

Review all target files

Leave a comment on the entire Merge Request to review all files targeted by the "target" parameters set.

⚠️ Note: Make sure your project maintainer, DevOps, or system administrator has configured the "target" in a proper way.

trigger all files