I agree with a lot of what you are saying here. > why are we reviewing code in the first place? It being part of engineering culture is spot on. I think of it

I agree with a lot of what you are saying here. > why are we reviewing code in the first place? It being part of engineering culture is spot on. I think of it as two things: (1) quality gate and (2) knowledge sharing. Because of (1), by default reviews can feel a bit like submitting homework - not all contributions are of the same risk level but they follow the same process. The idea behind Codeball is unassuming - identify and approve the bulk of easy contributions so that devs can focus their energy reviewing the trickier ones. This is can be especially nice in a trustful environment, keeping the momentum for devs to ship small & often. Another thing is - models can incorporate a surprising amount of indicators, for example, not just the outcome of the PR but also what happens to contribution after merging (was the code retained as-is or was it hot fixed a day later etc).