Pullmaster Documentation

Getting Started

Installation

1. Install the Pullmaster GitHub App on your organization or personal account.
2. Select which repositories Pullmaster should have access to.
3. That's it — Pullmaster learns from your repository history automatically. No configuration is required to start.

Usage

Mention @pullmasterai in any pull request comment with one of the supported commands:

Commands are case-insensitive and only work on pull request comments (not regular issues).

What Pullmaster Considers

Pullmaster evaluates every eligible reviewer using multiple signals, including:

• File familiarity — Who has worked on the changed files recently
• Code ownership — Designated maintainers defined in your PULLMASTER file
• Author-reviewer affinity — Who has successfully reviewed this author's work before
• Semantic expertise — AI-powered matching based on code understanding
• Review quality — Depth and thoroughness of past reviews
• Availability — Current workload and responsiveness

Pullmaster automatically adapts its recommendations based on the risk level of each PR. Critical changes to core files surface your most experienced reviewers, while routine updates are distributed across the team to reduce bottlenecks.

PULLMASTER File

The PULLMASTER file is an optional configuration file that lets you define path ownership rules that boost reviewers who own the changed files. It uses the same format as GitHub's CODEOWNERS file.

Why PULLMASTER instead of CODEOWNERS?

GitHub automatically requests reviewers listed in a CODEOWNERS file — there's no way to disable this behavior other than deleting or renaming the file. By renaming it to PULLMASTER, you stop GitHub's automatic reviewer requests while still giving Pullmaster the ownership data it needs for smarter recommendations.

File Locations

Pullmaster looks for the file in these locations (first match wins):

1. PULLMASTER (repository root)
2. .github/PULLMASTER
3. docs/PULLMASTER

The file is read from the repository's default branch.

File Format

The PULLMASTER file uses the same syntax as GitHub's CODEOWNERS file. See GitHub's documentation on CODEOWNERS syntax for the full format reference. Both individual users and teams are supported.

Migrating from CODEOWNERS

If you already have a CODEOWNERS file and want Pullmaster to handle reviewer selection instead of GitHub:

1. Rename your CODEOWNERS file to PULLMASTER (keep it in the same directory).
2. No other changes needed — the file format is identical.

Reviewer Escalation

When a reviewer doesn't respond to a pull request within a configurable timeout, Pullmaster can automatically request a review from the next best candidate. This prevents PRs from going stale when a reviewer is unavailable.

How It Works

1. If a reviewer assignment has been pending longer than your configured timeout and there is no reviewer activity on the PR (reviews or comments), Pullmaster selects a new reviewer using its scoring pipeline and requests their review on GitHub.
2. This repeats up to your configured maximum number of escalations per PR.

Pullmaster considers a PR to have reviewer activity if any non-bot user has submitted a review or left a comment (excluding @pullmasterai commands like suggest or assign). If there is any activity, escalation is skipped.

Configuration

Reviewer escalation is a per-user preference. Configure it from the settings section on your installations page:

• Escalation timeout — How many hours to wait before escalating (leave blank to disable escalation)
• Max escalations — Maximum number of additional reviewers to add per PR (default: 2)

How Pullmaster Learns

Pullmaster builds reviewer profiles automatically from your repository activity — push events, pull request reviews, and code changes. There is no manual training step. Pullmaster starts learning as soon as it's installed and improves as your team's activity grows.