How do we stop AI review tools from hallucinating and blocking PRs?

Use AI for triage and summarization, not gating. Let AI draft PR summaries or suggest nit fixes, but never make it a required check. Keep humans in the approval loop, and rely on deterministic linters/tests for gates.

Our repo is polyglot and huge. Will path filters and caching still help?

Yes. Use `dorny/paths-filter` (or GitLab rules) to scope jobs and `Nx`/`Turborepo` for monorepo caching. Even basic `actions/cache` for language package managers will cut times by 30–60%.

Where do E2E tests fit?

Run smoke E2E in the merge queue and fuller E2E nightly or on demand. PRs should run unit and a thin slice of integration tests. Keep E2E out of the critical path for individual PRs.

We have regulated workloads. How do we prove compliance?

Keep your paved-road checks reproducible, version-pinned, and auditable. Treat policy-as-code (OPA/Conftest) and Terraform-managed branch protections as your evidence. Store CI logs and SARIF in an artifact bucket; that satisfies most audit trails without bespoke bots.

Can we do this with GitLab or Bitbucket?

Yes. The principles are the same: shared templates, selective jobs, one policy gate, and a merge queue equivalent. Swap in GitLab CI `rules:changes` and `approval rules`, or Bitbucket Pipelines with `conditions` and a single quality gate job.

Platform-productivity · Oct 21, 2025 · 8 minute read

Code Review Automation That Doesn’t Kill Velocity: A Paved-Road You Can Actually Live With

Guardrails, not gates. The reference CI pipeline, policy where it matters, and the merge-queue patterns that cut PR cycle time without letting quality rot.

Alex Pierce

Partner, Platform & Reliability at GitPlumbers

20 years in the trenches from bare-metal Linux to multi-cluster GitOps. Led platform and SRE teams at two unicorns, survived three monorepo rewrites, and still has opinions about Makefiles.

Boring wins. Pave the road, measure, then tighten.

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Code Review Automation That Doesn’t Kill Velocity: A Paved-Road You Can Actually Live With

Key takeaways

Implementation checklist