AI Code Review: Your New Tireless Teammate

🧐 The Problem with Human Code Review

Code Review is vital, but it has problems inherent to human nature:

1. Fatigue: After reviewing 200 lines, attention drops sharply.
2. Subjectivity: “I don’t like this variable name” vs “This algorithm is O(n^2)”.
3. Context Switching: Interrupting your flow to review someone else’s PR.
4. Nitpicking: Wasting time discussing indentation instead of architecture.

AI doesn’t get tired, has no ego, and can check indentation in milliseconds.

🤖 Levels of AI Code Review

We can integrate AI at different stages of the review cycle.

Level 1: The Semantic Linter (Pre-commit)

Static tools (Detekt, Lint) find syntax errors. AI finds intent errors.

Imagine a local script that runs before committing:

“Review my changes. Am I introducing any security risks or breaking the MVVM pattern?”

Tools: Cursor IDE, IDE plugins with GPT-4.

Level 2: The Automated PR Reviewer (CI Pipeline)

This is where the magic happens. When you open a Pull Request, an agent (like CodeRabbit, Coderabbit.ai, or custom actions with OpenAI API) analyzes the diff.

What does AI look for?

• Cyclomatic Complexity: “Is this function too hard to read?”
• Missing Tests: “You added new logic in UserViewModel but I see no changes in UserViewModelTest.”
• Documentation: “You created a new public function without KDoc.”
• Security: “You are logging sensitive information (PII) in this Log.d.”

Example of AI-generated comment on a PR:

🤖 AI Reviewer: “On line 45, you are collecting a Flow inside a LaunchedEffect without using lifecycle.repeatOnLifecycle. This could cause collection to continue when the app is in the background, wasting resources.

Suggestion: Use collectAsStateWithLifecycle() or wrap it in repeatOnLifecycle.”

Level 3: The Summary Generator (Context for Humans)

Sometimes, understanding what a giant PR does is hard. AI can read all changes and generate a human description:

PR Summary (AI Generated): “This PR migrates the Login module from XML to Jetpack Compose.

• Deletes activity_login.xml.
• Creates LoginScreen.kt.
• Updates LoginViewModel to use StateFlow.
• Alert: Modifies AndroidManifest.xml, please review permissions.”

This saves the human reviewer 10 minutes of “archaeology” to understand the purpose of the change.

🛠️ Configuring an AI Code Reviewer with GitHub Actions

We can build a simple reviewer using the OpenAI API and GitHub Actions.

name: AI Code Review

on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize]

jobs:
  review:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Get Diff
        run: git diff origin/main > pr_diff.txt

      - name: Ask GPT-4
        uses: openai/gpt-action@v1
        with:
          api_key: ${{ secrets.OPENAI_API_KEY }}
          prompt: |
            Act as a Senior Android Reviewer.
            Analyze the following code diff.
            Look for:
            1. Potential concurrency bugs.
            2. Clean Architecture violations.
            3. Memory management errors (leaks).

            Be concise. If the code is fine, say "LGTM".

            Diff:
            ${{ env.DIFF_CONTENT }}

⚖️ The Human-AI Balance

AI should not have the final word (yet).

• AI: Excellent for finding patterns, missing boilerplate, logical syntax errors, and compliance with standards.
• Human: Excellent for judging if the feature meets business requirements, if UX is good, and if the architecture makes sense long-term.

The Golden Rule: Let AI handle the “Nitpicking” (style, docs, basic tests) so the human can focus on Architecture and Business.

🎯 Conclusion

Integrating AI into your Code Review process is like having a “very diligent Junior” who reads every line of code instantly. It doesn’t replace the Senior, but it takes away 80% of the tedious work, allowing the team to move faster and with greater confidence.