Quick Start

Get your first parallel AI code review in under 10 minutes.

Prerequisites

• A GitHub account with permission to create GitHub Apps
• A Vercel account (free tier works)
• An Anthropic API key

Step 1 — Create a GitHub App

1. Go to Settings → Developer settings → GitHub Apps → New GitHub App
2. Set the app name (e.g. my-claude-reviewer)
3. Set Webhook URL to a placeholder for now (https://example.com) — you'll update this after deploy
4. Set Webhook secret to a random string — save it, you'll need it later
5. Grant these permissions:
   • Pull requests: Read and write
   • Contents: Read-only
   • Metadata: Read-only
   • Issues: Read-only
6. Subscribe to these events:
   • Pull request
   • Issue comment
7. Click Create GitHub App
8. Note the App ID shown at the top of the app settings page
9. Scroll to Private keys and click Generate a private key — save the downloaded .pem file

Step 2 — Format your private key

Vercel stores secrets as single-line strings. Convert the PEM to a one-liner before adding it:

awk 'NF {printf "%s\\n", $0}' your-private-key.pem

The output will look like -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\nMIIE...\n-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----. Use this string as GITHUB_APP_PRIVATE_KEY.

Step 3 — Deploy to Vercel

Option A — Vercel dashboard:

1. Fork this repo on GitHub
2. Go to vercel.com/new and import your fork
3. Set framework preset to Other
4. Add environment variables (see Configuration for all options):

GITHUB_APP_ID=<your app ID>
GITHUB_APP_PRIVATE_KEY=-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\nMIIE...\n-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
GITHUB_WEBHOOK_SECRET=<your webhook secret>
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
REVIEW_ENABLED=true

5. Click Deploy and copy the production URL

Option B — Vercel CLI:

git clone https://github.com/joeblackwaslike/claude-review-bot.git
cd claude-review-bot
vercel link
vercel env add GITHUB_APP_ID
vercel env add GITHUB_APP_PRIVATE_KEY
vercel env add GITHUB_WEBHOOK_SECRET
vercel env add ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
vercel env add REVIEW_ENABLED   # value: true
vercel --prod

Step 4 — Point the webhook at Vercel

Back in your GitHub App settings, update the Webhook URL to:

https://your-deployment.vercel.app/api/github/webhook

Save changes. GitHub will send a ping event — check your Vercel function logs to confirm it arrives.

Step 5 — Install the app on your repos

1. In your GitHub App settings, click Install App
2. Select the repositories you want reviewed

Step 6 — Trigger your first review

On any open pull request in an installed repo, comment:

/claude-review

The bot will post a review within 15–60 seconds depending on PR size. Larger diffs (many changed files) take longer because five agents run in parallel, each processing the full diff.

Verification

After your first review posts, check:

• GET /api/health — returns { "status": "ok" }
• GET /api/debug — returns current config (API keys masked)
• Vercel function logs — look for agent results collected and merged review log lines

Local development

Use smee.io to receive webhooks locally:

# Terminal 1 — webhook proxy
npx smee-client --url https://smee.io/<your-channel> \
  --target http://localhost:3000/api/github/webhook

# Terminal 2 — local server
cp .env.example .env   # fill in your values
npm run dev

Point your GitHub App's Webhook URL at the smee channel URL during development, then switch back to the Vercel URL when you deploy.