Vigilant PR – adversarial AI code review that posts as you, not a bot

Vigilant PR v1 is a portable, workflow-agnostic AI pull-request reviewer that posts review comments on behalf of the user's GitHub identity, not a generic bot. Developed by tllongdev, it supports any AI model (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, Llama, NVIDIA, OpenRouter, or local models) and requires no repo-side setup or GitHub App—just a token. The tool is ready for GitHub pull requests, with Slack and Teams support in beta.

A portable, workflow-agnostic AI pull-request reviewer that posts review comments on behalf of you - your GitHub identity, not a generic bot. Get tagged as a reviewer on a pull request, and Vigilant PR reviews it and posts the comments as you - your GitHub identity, not a bot. No repo-side setup, no GitHub App, just your token. php flowchart LR CFG "Configure in the terminal:<br/ vigilant init" -- C1 CFG -.- C2 C1 "vigilant github-watch" -- A "You are tagged as a<br/ reviewer on a GitHub PR" C2 "vigilant slack-watch<br/ or vigilant teams-watch" -.- A2 "Beta: you are @-mentioned in a<br/ configured Slack or Teams channel" A -- B "Vigilant PR reads<br/ the PR and diff" A2 -.- B B -- C "Adversarial review,<br/ severity-tagged findings" C -- D "Posts inline comments<br/ as you, not a bot" D -- E "Approves if nothing blocks,<br/ comments if it does" classDef beta stroke: a98bff,color: a98bff,stroke-dasharray:5 5; classDef cmd fill: 0d2038,stroke: 4da3ff,color: cfe6ff; class A2 beta; class C2 beta; class CFG cmd; class C1 cmd; v1 - ready to use for reviewing GitHub pull requests. Use any AI model you want. Give Vigilant PR an API key for your preferred provider and it uses that model - Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok xAI , Llama, NVIDIA, OpenRouter, or a model you run locally. Some are free, some paid - your choice. You just set your key and pick a model or run vigilant init , which does it for you . See Models models for the exact options. Slack and Teams support also exists, but is still beta. - Python 3.12+ - The GitHub CLI gh , authenticated as the user who should author the comments gh auth login , or a GH TOKEN env var with Pull requests: read/write. - An API key for any supported model provider - including free, no-card tiers Groq, Google Gemini, NVIDIA NIM . See Models models . The core engine is dependency-free standard library only - model calls go over plain HTTP, no SDKs. Run vigilant init once. It connects your GitHub account runs gh auth login for you if needed and stores a model key - there are no files to edit. Keys are kept in a 0600 file at ~/.config/vigilant-pr/credentials.json the same posture as the gh and aws CLIs . Manage and switch models with the model command: vigilant model add pick a provider, paste a key stored, becomes active vigilant model add groq or name the provider directly vigilant model list see stored providers, masked keys, and the active one vigilant model use groq switch the active model by provider or provider/model vigilant model remove openai delete a stored key Prefer files/CI? A .env file and real environment variables still work and always take precedence over the stored keys real env .env store . Copy .env.example to .env and fill in what you use. If you set no model, Vigilant auto-selects one from whichever provider key it finds Anthropic preferred and prints which model it chose. pipx install git+https://github.com/tllongdev/vigilant-pr or pin a specific release: pipx install git+https://github.com/tllongdev/vigilant-pr@v1.1.0 or, from a clone: uv tool install . main is the stable release line, so the unpinned command always gets the latest release. Check what you have, then upgrade in place - your stored config and API keys live in ~/.config/vigilant-pr/ and are never touched by an upgrade: vigilant --version pipx: force a reinstall from the latest main most reliable pipx install --force git+https://github.com/tllongdev/vigilant-pr uv: uv tool install --force git+https://github.com/tllongdev/vigilant-pr container: docker pull ghcr.io/tllongdev/vigilant-pr:latest Use --force . pipx upgrade / uv tool upgrade compare version strings, so a plain upgrade can report "already up to date" and skip a newer main commit that didn't bump the version - and a pinned @vX.Y.Z install won't move at all. A forced reinstall always pulls the current code. To pin instead, reinstall with an explicit tag: pipx install --force git+https://github.com/tllongdev/vigilant-pr@v1.7.0 . From zero to auto-reviewing PRs as you, in three commands: pipx install git+https://github.com/tllongdev/vigilant-pr vigilant init connects GitHub, picks + stores a model key free options first vigilant github-watch auto-reviews any open PR where you're a requested reviewer vigilant init walks you through everything: it connects your GitHub account running gh auth login for you if needed , lets you pick a model provider leading with free, no-credit-card options like Groq , validates the key, and stores it. Nothing to hand-edit; switch models later with vigilant model use . Want to see a review before it posts anything? Dry-run any PR first: vigilant review https://github.com/owner/repo/pull/123 --dry-run That's the whole flow: install, init , watch. Everything below is reference for specific models, watcher tuning, and the chat surfaces. Vigilant PR is free to use right now. If it adds value to your workflow, donations https://square.link/u/A8qxaJVb go directly toward its continued development and maintenance. Apple Pay and Google Pay supported - one tap, no card number. Review a PR and post as you Sonnet 5, the default tier vigilant review https://github.com/owner/repo/pull/123 Escalate to Opus 4.8 for a hard PR vigilant review 123 --repo owner/repo --opus Preview without posting vigilant review 123 --repo owner/repo --dry-run Preview, then approve before it posts great while trying a new model vigilant review 123 --repo owner/repo --approve By default reviews post automatically. If you're trying an unfamiliar model - or just want to watch what it produces before trusting it - turn on the approval gate: Vigilant prints the full review summary + inline comments and asks for a y/N before anything is posted. - One-off: add --approve to review or github-watch . - Always on: set VIGILANT REQUIRE APPROVAL=1 or answer "yes" in vigilant init . - Turn it back off: --no-approve or VIGILANT REQUIRE APPROVAL=0 . Once you trust the model, drop the flag and let it post on your behalf. Vigilant PR is model-agnostic. Pick a model with a provider/model string via --model or the VIGILANT MODEL env var, and supply that provider's key. A bare name e.g. claude-sonnet-5 is treated as Anthropic, so existing setups keep working. Under the hood there are just two wire protocols - the Anthropic Messages API and the OpenAI-compatible /chat/completions API - so most providers, local servers, and gateways work out of the box. | You have... | VIGILANT MODEL | Also set | |---|---|---| Nothing - want a free real model | groq/llama-3.3-70b-versatile | GROQ API KEY free, no card | | A free Gemini key | gemini/gemini-2.5-flash | GEMINI API KEY free tier | | A free NVIDIA key | nvidia nim/deepseek-ai/deepseek-v3.2-exp | NVIDIA NIM API KEY free, no card | | A Claude / Anthropic key best results | anthropic/claude-sonnet-5 or -opus-4-8 | ANTHROPIC API KEY | | An OpenAI key | openai/gpt-5.5 | OPENAI API KEY | | An OpenRouter key | openrouter/meta-llama/llama-3.3-70b-instruct | OPENROUTER API KEY | An xAI Grok key not Groq | xai/grok-4.5 | XAI API KEY | | A local model Ollama | ollama/qwen2.5:14b | VIGILANT API BASE=http://localhost:11434/v1 if not default | | Any OpenAI-compatible server vLLM, LM Studio, TGI | openai compatible/<model | VIGILANT API BASE , VIGILANT API KEY if required | | An AI gateway / LLM proxy | gateway/<model | VIGILANT API BASE + auth see below | | Just want to see it run | mock | nothing scripted output, no key, no cost | If your models are fronted by an OpenAI-compatible AI gateway or LLM proxy LiteLLM, Portkey, Cloudflare AI Gateway, Kong, a self-hosted proxy, or an internal enterprise gateway - often for centrally-managed, lower-cost access , point Vigilant at it with the gateway provider. It's fully vendor-neutral - no gateway is named in code, you just supply the endpoint and credentials. The easiest path is the guided wizard, which prompts for the base URL and auth mode and saves everything to the managed credential store: vigilant model add gateway Or configure it manually with environment variables or a .env . Set the model and base URL, then pick one auth mode: export VIGILANT MODEL=gateway/your-model-name export VIGILANT API BASE=https://gateway.example.com/v1 Auth A: a static bearer token export VIGILANT API KEY=... Auth B: OAuth2 client-credentials token is fetched, cached, and auto-refreshed export VIGILANT OAUTH TOKEN URL=https://auth.example.com/oauth/token export VIGILANT OAUTH CLIENT ID=... export VIGILANT OAUTH CLIENT SECRET=... optional: export VIGILANT OAUTH SCOPE=... scope, if your IdP requires one export VIGILANT OAUTH AUDIENCE=... audience, if your IdP requires one export VIGILANT OAUTH AUTH STYLE=basic send client id/secret as HTTP Basic default: body Free tiers get you started in ~2 minutes: Groq fastest : https://console.groq.com/keys https://console.groq.com/keys key starts with gsk Gemini : https://aistudio.google.com/apikey https://aistudio.google.com/apikey NVIDIA NIM : https://build.nvidia.com https://build.nvidia.com key starts with nvapi- export GROQ API KEY=gsk ... export VIGILANT MODEL=groq/llama-3.3-70b-versatile vigilant review https://github.com/owner/repo/pull/123 Run vigilant models to see which providers your credentials can reach and, where the provider exposes a list endpoint, the exact model ids you can use . For the deepest reviews, use a frontier model.Adversarial bug-finding scales with model quality; Claude Sonnet 5 default or Opus 4.8 catch subtler issues than small free models. The free tiers are great for trying it out and for lighter PRs. Extended-thinking tuning Opus adaptive thinking applies only to the Anthropic path; other providers run with a low review temperature. vigilant github-watch polls GitHub for open PRs where you are a requested reviewer and auto-reviews them on your behalf. It is idempotent never re-reviews the same head SHA , bounded poll interval + per-day cap , and resilient a failure on one PR never crashes the loop . No GitHub App, no webhooks - just your token. The old name vigilant watch still works as an alias. Run continuously default: poll every 120s, cap 50 reviews/UTC-day vigilant github-watch One pass and exit - ideal for cron vigilant github-watch --once Tune cadence and cap vigilant github-watch --poll-interval 300 --daily-cap 20 By default the watcher reviews any PR you are requested on. Constrain it with env vars comma-separated . Deny always wins; a non-empty allow list is exclusive: export VIGILANT ORG ALLOW="acme,acme-labs" only these orgs export VIGILANT REPO DENY="acme/secret-repo" never this repo export VIGILANT MODEL="claude-opus-4-8" default tier for the daemon The seen-cache lives at ~/.vigilant/seen.json override with VIGILANT SEEN PATH . Mount a volume so idempotency survives restarts: docker run -d --name vigilant-pr --restart unless-stopped \ -e ANTHROPIC API KEY \ -e GH TOKEN \ -e VIGILANT ORG ALLOW="acme" \ -v vigilant-state:/root/.vigilant \ -e VIGILANT SEEN PATH=/root/.vigilant/seen.json \ ghcr.io/tllongdev/vigilant-pr:latest github-watch The watcher uses only your token. It needs: Contents: read and Pull requests: read/write on the target repos post reviews, read diffs .- Repo read access sufficient for gh search prs --review-requested=@me to see the PRs you are tagged on. Beta.The GitHub review / github-watch flow above is the stable core. slack-watch works with no Slack app, but it depends on your Slack session token, so validate it in your own workspace before relying on it. vigilant slack-watch polls a Slack channel and reviews any PR you're @-mentioned on - whether the mention is a top-level message or a reply inside a thread. It needs no Slack app and no workspace-admin approval - it authenticates with a token you already have and only reads a channel you can already read. It's dependency-free stdlib only . There are two app-free ways to give it a token: Auto recommended - --auto-token. Vigilant reads the token straight from your logged-in Slack session in Chrome and automatically re-extracts it when Slack expires it , so a long-running monitor never dies on an expired session. This needs the optional refresh extra one-time : pipx install 'vigilant-pr slack-refresh @ git+https://github.com/tllongdev/vigilant-pr' or, into an existing install: pip install 'vigilant-pr slack-refresh @ git+https://github.com/tllongdev/vigilant-pr' python -m playwright install chromium export GH TOKEN="ghp ..." export VIGILANT MODEL="groq/llama-3.3-70b-versatile" or any provider vigilant slack-watch --auto-token --channel C0123ABCD If you belong to multiple Slack workspaces, Vigilant picks the one that can read your channel automatically; set VIGILANT SLACK TEAM=T0123 to force one. Static - set the token yourself. No refresh an xoxc- token expires in a few hours; an xoxb- / xoxp- OAuth token lasts : export SLACK TOKEN="xoxc-..." or xoxb-/xoxp- export SLACK COOKIE D="xoxd-..." required only for xoxc- tokens export GH TOKEN="ghp ..." export VIGILANT MODEL="groq/llama-3.3-70b-versatile" vigilant slack-watch --channel C0123ABCD repeatable, or VIGILANT SLACK CHANNELS=C1,C2 A message triggers a review only when it both @-mentions you and contains a GitHub PR link, so it won't fire on every PR posted in a busy channel and it never loops on its own reply . By default it posts the outcome back in-thread; pass --no-reply to stay silent. Your Slack user id is auto-detected from the token via auth.test ; override with VIGILANT SLACK USER ID . Find a channel ID from the channel's "View channel details" footer, or the /archives/C… URL. It also persists progress to ~/.config/vigilant-pr/slack watch/ override with VIGILANT SLACK STATE DIR , so a restart resumes where it left off: it reviews anything that arrived while it was down, and won't re-review or lose track of threads. At startup it seeds tracked threads from the last week of history, so it catches @-mentions in replies to recently-active threads, not just brand-new ones. Residual edge: a reply to a thread with no activity in the last ~7 days won't be tracked. docker run -d --name vigilant-slack-watch --restart unless-stopped \ -e GH TOKEN -e GROQ API KEY -e VIGILANT MODEL \ -e SLACK TOKEN -e SLACK COOKIE D -e VIGILANT SLACK CHANNELS \ ghcr.io/tllongdev/vigilant-pr:latest slack-watch vigilant teams-watch serves a Microsoft Teams Outgoing Webhook endpoint. Teams has no Socket-Mode equivalent, so this surface needs an inbound HTTPS URL put it behind your reverse proxy or a tunnel . It is dependency-free stdlib HMAC + HTTP . The old name vigilant teams still works as an alias. Because a review outlasts Teams' ~5s response budget, the webhook acks immediately and posts the result to a Teams Incoming Webhook TEAMS INCOMING WEBHOOK URL when the review finishes. export TEAMS HMAC SECRET="<base64 secret Teams shows on webhook creation " export TEAMS INCOMING WEBHOOK URL="https://outlook.office.com/webhook/..." optional export ANTHROPIC API KEY="sk-ant-..." GH TOKEN="ghp ..." vigilant teams-watch --port 8080 Then @-mention the outgoing webhook with a PR link in a channel. Comments are authored by your GitHub token, so they are your review and read as your own writing. By default each review summary ends with a short, quiet footnote disclosing that it was AI-assisted, which model produced it, and who it was posted on behalf of - honest attribution without a heavy bot banner: AI-assisted review via Vigilant PR · claude-sonnet-5 · posted by @you Disable it with --no-attribution or VIGILANT ATTRIBUTION=0 for private/personal use. Separately, each body carries a hidden HTML-comment marker invisible on GitHub that lets the tool recognize its own prior comments for dedup and re-review. Approval is mechanical and honest: the review is submitted as APPROVE when there are no blocking findings no critical, no medium - so nit-only or clean PRs get approved with their comments attached - and as a COMMENT when anything blocks or a prior concern is re-flagged as unresolved . It never uses REQUEST CHANGES , so it surfaces problems without hard-blocking the PR. The goal is to move PRs forward unless something genuinely blocks merge. Vigilant PR runs entirely on your machine or CI. It has no server, no account, and no telemetry - it never sends your data to us or to any third party you didn't configure. Here is exactly what leaves your machine, and when: | Data | Goes to | When | Notes | |---|---|---|---| PR diff, changed-file context, and your repo's guidance files AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md | The model provider you choose | Every review | A cloud model Anthropic, OpenAI, Groq, Gemini, NVIDIA, OpenRouter, xAI receives this over the internet under that provider's API data policy. A local model Ollama or your own self-hosted/gateway endpoint keeps it on your machine/network. | | PR metadata and your review comments | GitHub, via the gh CLI | Every review | GitHub already hosts your code; the review is posted as you. | | Channel messages / @-mentions | Slack or Teams | Only if you run slack-watch / teams-watch | Uses a token you already have. | | API keys and tokens | Stored locally in a 0600 file | Setup | Transmitted only as auth headers to the services above - never anywhere else. | Maximum privacy: pick a local model ollama/... or your own OpenAI-compatible gateway. Then your code is never sent to a third party - inference runs on your own hardware and the only external call is to GitHub, which already has your code. Vigilant PR is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see LICENSE /tllongdev/vigilant-pr/blob/develop/LICENSE and NOTICE /tllongdev/vigilant-pr/blob/develop/NOTICE . Copyright c 2026 Timothy Long / Longitudinal Intelligence Technologies LIT . "Vigilant PR" and the Vigilant PR logo are trademarks of Longitudinal Intelligence Technologies LIT . The license covers the source code; it does not grant rights to the name or logo. You're welcome to build on the code under Apache-2.0, but forks and derivatives must use their own name and branding. Contributions are accepted under the terms in CONTRIBUTING.md /tllongdev/vigilant-pr/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.md .