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How to Configure

To manage the reviewer configuration, customer admins can go to the Company Settings page in the Zenable Management Console. All configuration changes are applied immediately to your organization and affect all future code reviews.

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Configuration Profiles

Profiles let you maintain multiple independent configurations and assign them to specific repositories. Every tenant starts with a Default profile that applies to all repos unless overridden. Each profile contains a complete, independent set of configuration options. Repos without a profile assignment use the Default configuration. Repos assigned to a profile use that profile’s settings instead.

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Assigning Profiles to Repos

On the Integrations page, open a repository’s settings (gear icon) and select a profile from the dropdown. Repos with an assigned profile display a colored badge showing the profile name.

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Automatic Profile Assignment

As you integrate Zenable with more repositories, manually attaching configuration profiles becomes tedious and error-prone. That’s why profiles support auto-attach policies: define a scope and every repository it matches uses that profile automatically — by naming pattern (acme/*-prototype), by organization or namespace (every repo under acme), or by repository metadata such as GitHub custom properties, e.g. tier is production (see Repository Metadata Conditions). To set one, pick the profile on the Settings → Configuration page and click the gear next to the profile selector. Zenable re-evaluates policies continuously — when the GitHub App is installed, when new repositories appear, when a repository’s custom properties change, and whenever a profile or its policy is edited — so new repos land on the right configuration without any clicks. In case of conflicts, a manually assigned profile always wins: policies never touch that repo until you switch it back to Default. Only one policy can match a repository — saving a policy that would create an overlap is rejected with the conflicting repositories listed, and if an overlap emerges later (a new repo, a property change) the repo keeps its current assignment and the Integrations page shows a warning until you adjust the policies. Repositories matching no policy use the tenant’s Default profile, as before.
Metadata-based policies require the Zenable GitHub App’s Custom properties read permission — see Repository Custom Properties. Name- and organization-based policies work without it.

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Use Cases

  • High-scrutiny repos — enable AI reviews with premium mode, exhaustive context refinement and requirement suggestions, all finding types visible, lower preflight thresholds to catch more
  • Relaxed for prototypes — disable preflight, hide lower-signal finding types like readability and complexity, skip clean PR comments to reduce noise
  • Team-specific defaults — frontend repos get accessibility findings enabled with thorough context refinement; backend repos focus on security and performance with stricter quality filters

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Configuration Options

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Feature Toggles

Each profile carries the base on/off state for the three per-repository features:
  • PR reviews (pr_reviews.enabled, default true) — whether pull/merge requests in repos using this profile are reviewed at all
  • Context refinement (repository_analyzer.refine_context_enabled, default true) — whether the refine-context analysis runs
  • Requirement suggestions (repository_analyzer.suggest_requirements_enabled, default true) — whether the suggest-requirements analysis runs
A repository follows its config profile by default. Flipping a switch on the Integrations page creates a per-repository override for that one setting, forcing the repo on or off regardless of the profile. Each switch is captioned so you can see where its value came from — (from profile) or (override) — and the tooltip names the profile and what it says. To drop an override, click the (override) caption; the switch goes back to following the profile when you save. Repositories toggled before profiles carried these settings keep their explicit values as overrides until you clear them. Subscription gating still applies — analyses stay unavailable on free plans regardless of profile settings.

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Exclusions

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Exclude Files

List of additional filenames or glob patterns to exclude from all Zenable integrations. This field accepts a list (array) of patterns and works like gitignore, including support for negation patterns.
A standard list of lock files will automatically be added to the beginning of your configuration. These exclusions apply everywhere Zenable runs.
Supports:
  • Exact filename matches (e.g., "package-lock.json")
  • Glob patterns (e.g., "**/*.rbi", "foo/**/*.pyc")
  • Negation patterns with ! prefix (e.g., "!keep-this.json")
  • *.log - Skip all log files in any directory
  • **/*.tmp - Skip all .tmp files in any directory (recursive)
  • src/**/*.test.js - Skip all .test.js files under src/ directory
  • docs/*.md - Skip markdown files directly in docs/ directory
  • build/* - Skip all files directly in build/ directory
  • **/node_modules/** - Skip all files in any node_modules directory
  • example.py - Skip files named example.py in any directory
  • **/example.tmp - Skip files named example.tmp in any directory (i.e. the same as example.tmp)
  • /example.py - Skip example.py only in the root directory
Negation patterns start with ! and allow you to include files that would otherwise be skipped. Order matters - the last matching pattern wins.Skip all log files except important.log
  • Add *.log to skip all log files
  • Add !important.log to include important.log
Skip all files in build/ except those in build/keep/
  • Add build/**/* to skip all files in build/
  • Add !build/keep/**/* to include files in build/keep/
Escaping files that literally start with !
To skip files that literally start with ! (fairly rare), escape the exclamation mark with a backslash: \!filename.txt

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Exclude Branches

List of branches to skip. You can use python regex to match the branch names. We will check all the patterns in the list, if any pattern match, the PR opened in that branch will be skipped.

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Smart Filters

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Preflight Checks

Preflight lets you optionally skip reviews based on static analysis findings.
  • enabled: Whether to enable preflight. (default: false)
  • max_changed_lines: Maximum total changed lines allowed before skipping the review. (default: 2500)

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PR Quality Filter

PR Quality Filter lets you optionally skip reviews based on the quality of the PR. We measure the PR quality based on analysis of the whole PR and the generated review. We measure multiple dimensions of quality, such as code quality, architecture quality, testing quality, documentation quality, security quality, and maintainability. This generates a final overall quality score for the PR, which is used to determine if the PR review will be sent or not. Skip reviews with quality score below the threshold can be a useful way to skip reviews on pr that are not fully done, and reduce the noise in your PRs.
  • enabled: Whether to enable pr_quality_filter. (default: false)
  • quality_threshold: The minimum quality score required to post a review. Valid values are between 0 and 1. (default: 0.5)

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Review Drafts

Controls whether Zenable reviews draft pull requests (GitHub) and merge requests marked as draft / work-in-progress (GitLab).
  • true — draft PRs/MRs are reviewed as soon as they are opened.
  • false — draft PRs/MRs are skipped silently. They will be reviewed automatically when transitioned to “ready for review”.
Setting this to false is useful if your team relies heavily on draft PRs for in-progress work and prefers to only receive Zenable reviews once the author explicitly marks the PR as ready.
  • review_drafts: Whether to review draft PRs/MRs. (default: true)

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Reviewer Context and Feedback

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Reactions

Configuration section for controlling which reactions are added during reviews. This allows you to enable or disable specific reactions that the reviewer generates.
Taking a Look Reaction
Controls the “eyes” emoji reaction (👀) that is added at the start of a review. The reaction is automatically removed once the review is complete. Default: true (👀 reaction is added)

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Comments

Configuration section for controlling which comments are posted during reviews. This allows you to enable or disable specific informational comments that the reviewer generates.
No Findings Comment
When set to true, posts the “Nice work! 😎” comment when no issues are found in the PR. Set to false to disable this comment - when disabled and there are no findings, no review comment will be posted at all. Default: true (comment is posted)
Finding Summaries
When set to true, each finding comment starts with a one-line summary before the detailed explanation. Default: true (summary is shown)
These settings only affect informational comments. Reviews with actual findings or suggestions will always be posted regardless of these settings.

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PR/MR Description

Adds a Zenable-generated summary of what the PR/MR does to the description. The summary is additive-only, so the author’s own text is preserved. Two independent settings control it: Mode (how much detail, or off entirely) and Edit Trigger (when to post).
Mode
Controls the verbosity of the generated summary.
  • off — Never edit the description.
  • short — Add a brief summary.
  • full — Add a comprehensive description.
Default: off
Edit Trigger
When Mode is not off, controls when Zenable posts the summary.
  • always — Post the summary on every reviewed PR/MR.
  • when_inaccurate — Post only when the author’s title/description is judged inaccurate; leave an accurate description untouched (less noise).
Default: always
The Edit Trigger setting only appears when Mode is not off.

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PR/MR Risk Assessment

Surfaces a Zenable-assessed risk level on each PR/MR. The LLM scores a set of rubric dimensions independently on a 0–10 scale; the final level is derived deterministically from the weighted composite score. This makes the outcome reproducible and auditable, and lets tenants tune it by customizing the dimensions rather than by adjusting prompts. When enabled, Zenable appends a small Risk: <emoji> <Level> heading to the review body, followed by a collapsible Risk analysis block with the rationale.
Mode
Controls how the risk assessment is surfaced.
  • off — The risk assessment step is skipped entirely.
  • comment_only — The risk section is included in the review body. No labels are applied to the PR/MR.
  • comment_and_label — The risk section is included in the review body, and a matching label is applied to the PR/MR.
Default: comment_and_label
Labels (comment_and_label only)
When comment_and_label is selected, Zenable ensures the following four labels exist in the repository/project and applies the one matching the assessed level. The risk labels are mutually exclusive: if a previous review assigned a different level (for example high) and the code has since improved, the stale label is removed before the new one is applied.
  • zenable/risk:low
  • zenable/risk:medium
  • zenable/risk:high
  • zenable/risk:critical
Rubric Dimensions
The rubric dimensions are the inputs the LLM scores. Six built-in dimensions are active by default: You can replace these with up to six custom dimensions from the Settings → Config profiles → Rubric dimensions section of the management console. Each custom dimension needs a name and a description; you can enable or disable individual rows. When custom dimensions are saved, they replace the defaults entirely for that config profile. Use Reset to defaults to restore the built-in set.
The Rubric dimensions section only appears when the risk assessment mode is not off.

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Finding Types

Each review comment is classified into one of the following labels. All are shown by default — deselect a type to hide comments with that label.
  • Bug — Incorrect behavior, logic errors, or broken functionality
  • Readability — Hard-to-follow code structure, unclear naming, or poor formatting
  • Performance — Inefficient algorithms, unnecessary allocations, or scalability concerns
  • Complexity — Overly complicated logic that could be simplified
  • Security — Vulnerabilities, unsafe patterns, or missing input validation
  • Inconsistency — Contradicts existing patterns, conventions, or nearby code
  • Accessibility — Missing or incorrect accessibility support (ARIA, keyboard nav, color contrast)
  • Mistake — Typos, copy-paste errors, or accidental omissions
  • Other — Issues that don’t fit the above categories
Default: All types visible. Deselect a type to suppress comments with that label.

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IDE/Agent Hook

Settings that govern how the Zenable CLI emits findings to coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, OpenCode, etc.) when the hook fires after edits.

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Triage Instructions

The preamble emitted as <instructions>...</instructions> ahead of findings the first time findings surface in an agent session. The agent uses this preamble to decide how to triage each finding (label categories, fix-versus-defer guidance, output format). Customize the text per config profile when your team wants a different triage protocol — for example, a stricter “fix everything before continuing” stance, or a more permissive “label only, don’t fix” workflow. Leave the field empty to fall back to the in-binary default that ships with the CLI. The block is always emitted; setting an empty value falls back to the default rather than suppressing it. To change the wording for a specific repo, assign that repo to a config profile with the desired text.

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Default Configuration

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Preflight

  • enabled: true
  • max_changed_lines: 2500

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PR Quality Filter

  • enabled: true
  • quality_threshold: 0.5

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Review Drafts

  • review_drafts: true

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PR/MR Description

  • mode: off
  • edit_trigger: always

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PR/MR Risk Assessment

  • mode: comment_and_label

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IDE/Agent Hook

  • triage_instructions: built-in default (the CLI ships a multi-line preamble that labels findings as addressed, deferred, out-of-scope, rule-mismatch, or already-mitigated).

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Files Excluded by Default

The following files are automatically excluded by default across all Zenable integrations:
By default, no branches are skipped.

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Troubleshooting

If you’re having issues with the GitHub or GitLab reviewers, try the following:
  • Verify your configuration in Company Settings → Configurations is correct.
  • The skip_branches option uses python regex to match the branch names. Ensure your regex patterns are valid.
  • If any of these solutions don’t work, contact our support team at support@zenable.io.