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Launch HN: Axolo (YC W21) – Faster pull requests and code reviews
Hi HN!
We’re Arthur and Sydney (cosydney). We’re building Axolo (https://axolo.co https://axolo.co) a bidirectional Github-Slack integration to help tech teams reduce pull request time and improve code review’s feedback.
Sydney and I met in 42, a software engineering school in Paris, and started working together on different tech projects last year. While working on our last business, a SaaS management platform for SMEs, we were in a squad of 4 to 5 people and often found ourselves writing direct messages in Slack about pull requests. We were telling each other things like ‘Hey Arthur, I’ve updated my last pull request feature/zoom_integration, do you have time to check it out soon?’ or “it’s been two days, do you have time to review feature/user_settings today, here is the link: github/axolo-co/api.axolo.co/pull/381?”. It was messy, took time and mental load to contextualize each pull request to each other.
We talked to over 100 companies about how they ship code. Here is the most common pattern: An engineer creates a pull request and asks someone or a dedicated team to review it. Notifications are poorly handled and people often ping again directly. Then, comments are made on Github and if a disagreement appears, the conversation goes on a voice call or in Slack.
This approach has two major problems. (1) Dangling pull requests are waste of time and a source of frustration for developers. They cause the code development process to slow down and prevent developers from focusing on a new task ahead. It’s difficult to dive back into a pull request you submitted two days ago. (2) Feedback on code is hard to convey between one developer to another. It can be misinterpreted or even worse: not given at all.
The ideal solution doesn’t need a new tool in our daily routine. Having in mind that most of the friction was in context-switching between Github and Slack, we decided to build a bridge between those two.
So we developed Axolo as a bi-directional Github-Slack integration. Each pull request creates a temporary Slack channel where Github notifications are sent (comments, reviews, actions & deployments). The creator, reviewers, and assignees are invited to that channel. Then when the pull request is either closed or merged, we save the conversation as documentation in the Github pull request and archive the channel.
We're not only a code review notification center. We consider each pull request as a small independent project where all people that take a part in it will be invited. Here’s a demo video (https://youtu.be/aoOZNGdBKlY https://youtu.be/aoOZNGdBKlY) of how it works, if you want to take a glance at our main features.
Our public beta started three weeks ago. To sign up on Axolo, you need to install our Github app on your organization (we do not have access to your code) and our Slack app. Most of our features are free for everyone, but if you’re looking for specific settings & analytics, the professional plan is 8$/ engineer / month that you can try (you don't have to enter a credit card upfront).
We know the Hacker News community is full of many engineers with deep experiences in code reviewing (and code shipping!) and we look forward to receiving your feedback on our work. Thank you!
- jrowley 5y agoI really appreciate how this reduces notifications for engineers not involved in the review.
- cosydney 5y agoYes, one should only receive relevant notifications.
- csmpltn 5y ago> "I really appreciate how this reduces notifications for engineers not involved in the review." But it definitely increases notifications for people involved in the review. "A war room for each pull request" you'll exhaust your reviewers very quickly with this mindset. What about cases where any one random reviewer (or several) is needed from a larger group of people? Does everyone get paged in? Or cases where a single reviewer is assigned to multiple different reviews? This becomes a DDOS attack on the human attention span and has the potential to create disorientation more than anything.
- jrowley 5y agoI like how much you are focusing on developer focus here! I guess you need to compare this against something else for it to better. At my workplace, we were originally really small, just 3 or 4 engineers, so have a code-review specific channel where all members of the channel get notifications from github for ALL pull requests. As the size of the team increases (closer to 10 engineers now), I think the value from this channel is kind of decreasing, since there are fewer conversions happening in it. So this tool helps solve that problem.
- arthurcoudouy 5y ago> What about cases where any one random reviewer (or several) is needed from a larger group of people? Does everyone get paged in? If you select several reviewers and only one is needed, that'll ping the group of reviewers. That's not something we recommend, we think that one should use a random algorithm to select a specific reviewer if you prefer to select a group of people (https://docs.github.com/en/organizations/organizing-members-into-teams/managing-code-review-assignment-for-your-team#configuring-code-review-assignment https://docs.github.com/en/organizations/organizing-members-...). > Or cases where a single reviewer is assigned to multiple different reviews? This becomes a DDOS attack on the human attention span and has the potential to create disorientation more than anything. Instead of having notifications from Github, emails & Slack, we believed that it's easier to manage notifications when they come from only one place. When you're working on something, notifications should be muted. Axolo in Slack works as an "inbox zero", you should focus on your code and come see where your review is needed in a dedicated time.