What The Diff

What is What The Diff?

What The Diff is an AI-powered code review assistant designed to streamline the pull request process on GitHub and GitLab. It leverages artificial intelligence to automate various tasks, making code reviews more efficient and accessible to everyone involved, including non-technical stakeholders. This tool aims to reduce the time and effort developers spend on routine tasks, allowing them to focus on more complex problem-solving and innovation.

What are the key features of What The Diff?

What The Diff offers a range of features designed to improve the code review workflow:

Automated PR Descriptions: Automatically generates descriptive comments for pull requests, saving developers the time and effort of manually writing them.
Rich Summary Notifications: Provides simplified and translated summaries of pull requests to keep non-technical stakeholders informed and engaged.
Beautiful Changelogs: Creates public changelogs that can be shared or consumed via a JSON API for internal use, making it easy to track and communicate changes.
Weekly Progress Reports: Delivers weekly reports summarizing all changes made during the week, providing a high-level overview of project progress.
Inline AI Refactoring: Allows developers to refactor code with AI support directly within the pull request, improving code quality and consistency.
Fine-Grained Settings: Offers customizable settings to skip CI pull requests, delay draft pull requests, and limit token consumption, giving users more control over the tool's behavior.

How does What The Diff work?

What The Diff works by integrating with GitHub and GitLab through their respective APIs. When a pull request is created or updated, What The Diff analyzes the diff (the changes between the branches) and uses an AI model to generate a description of the changes in plain English. It then posts this description as a comment on the pull request.

For summary notifications, What The Diff simplifies the technical details and translates them into a more accessible language, ensuring that non-technical stakeholders can understand the impact of the changes. The tool also provides options for creating and sharing changelogs, as well as generating weekly progress reports.

Inline AI refactoring is another key feature, allowing developers to select code snippets and use AI to suggest and apply refactoring changes directly within the pull request. This helps maintain code quality and consistency.

How to use What The Diff?

Connect to GitHub or GitLab: Create an account by connecting to either GitHub or GitLab.
Grant Permissions: Grant the necessary permissions to allow What The Diff to access your repositories and pull requests.
Configure Settings: Customize the settings to suit your needs, such as skipping CI pull requests or delaying draft pull requests.
Start Reviewing: As pull requests are created or updated, What The Diff will automatically generate descriptions and provide other features as configured.

Why choose What The Diff?

Saves Time and Effort: Automates the time-consuming task of writing pull request descriptions.
Improves Communication: Makes code reviews more accessible to non-technical stakeholders.
Enhances Code Quality: Supports inline AI refactoring to improve code quality and consistency.
Provides Insights: Offers weekly progress reports and changelogs to track and communicate changes effectively.
Customizable: Allows users to configure settings to suit their specific needs.

Who is What The Diff for?

What The Diff is designed for:

Software Development Teams: Teams that want to streamline their code review process and improve collaboration.
Project Managers: Managers who need to stay informed about project progress and code changes.
Non-Technical Stakeholders: Individuals who need to understand the impact of code changes without diving into technical details.
Developers: Developers who want to automate routine tasks and focus on more complex problem-solving.

Best way to improve code review process?

To improve the code review process, consider the following:

Automate Routine Tasks: Use tools like What The Diff to automate tasks such as writing pull request descriptions and generating summaries.
Involve Non-Technical Stakeholders: Ensure that non-technical stakeholders can understand the impact of code changes by providing simplified summaries and translations.
Encourage Collaboration: Foster a collaborative environment where developers can easily share and discuss code changes.
Use AI-Powered Tools: Leverage AI-powered tools to identify potential issues and suggest improvements to the code.
Track Progress: Use changelogs and weekly progress reports to track and communicate changes effectively.

By implementing these strategies, you can significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your code review process.

What The Diff helps development teams automate the tedious parts of code review. By using AI to create automated pull request descriptions, summarize notifications, and help with code refactoring, developers can focus on higher-level tasks. The ultimate goal is to accelerate development cycles while maintaining code quality, making What The Diff a valuable addition to any modern development workflow.