AWS DevOps & Developer Productivity Blog

Introducing an Interactive Code Review Experience with Amazon Q Developer in GitHub

Code reviews are one of the most valuable rituals in software development. They help ensure quality, maintain consistency, and foster growth as engineers. But they’re also one of the most time consuming steps in the software development lifecycle. A common pattern I’ve seen is a developer opening a pull request (PR), receiving automated or peer comments, and then needing to search through documentation, Slack threads, or past code just to understand why a change was suggested. That search for missing context creates a friction that slows teams down, adds back-and-forth cycles, and often distracts from the bigger picture of building great products.

In the initial preview experience, teams used Amazon Q Developer in GitHub across issues and PRs for feature work, automated code reviews, and common modernization tasks. This kept work inside GitHub and reduced handoffs. Automatic reviews on new or reopened PRs surfaced findings early, but teams still wanted more context and a tighter loop inside the PR.

Today we’re introducing an interactive code review experience for PRs. You can ask Amazon Q Developer questions about any finding using /q, see a concise summary with threaded findings, and apply suggested changes without leaving GitHub. Code reviews by Amazon Q Developer now complete quicker than before, which reduces wait time and shortens the review cycle so teams can merge sooner and spend more time building.

What’s new and why it matters

  • Interactive conversations in the pull request: Comment with /q to get inline answers, or ask Amazon Q Developer to propose a code change you can apply in the PR. For example:/q explain this finding or /q propose a change that replaces class toggles with a data attribute for state.
  • Code review summaries with threaded findings: Each code review begins with a concise summary and findings are threaded underneath. This makes updates easier to follow and reduces noise.
  • Faster execution with clearer notifications: Amazon Q Developer completes its analysis quicker, and notifications are organized and easier to scan. This reduces wait time and shortens the review cycle. When you create or open a new PR, Amazon Q Developer automatically starts a code review if the code review feature is enabled for your GitHub installation in the Amazon Q Developer console. Subsequent commits do not trigger another automatic review. To run a fresh analysis, post /q review as a new comment on the PR.

Getting Started with Amazon Q Developer in GitHub

To get started, install the Amazon Q Developer GitHub App in your GitHub organization or repository. The app is available through the GitHub Marketplace and can be used without an AWS account during the preview. During installation, you choose whether to provide access to all repositories or only selected repositories in your GitHub organization. You can increase free usage by registering the app installation in the Amazon Q Developer console.

For more details on installation, permissions, and configuration options, see the Amazon Q Developer for GitHub documentation. Once the app is installed, you can begin using Q Developer to review PRs automatically.

Using Amazon Q Developer in Pull Requests

To dive deeper, here’s an end-to-end walkthrough of the new interactive code review experience using a simple card game I built with Amazon Q Developer.

  1. Create a new pull request: In this example, I started by creating a feature branch and named it demo, added atailwind.css file to the JavaScript and HTML card game app, pushed the branch, and opened a PR for review.
    • GitHub interface showing the creation of a new pull request for a demo branch, with changes to a tailwind.css file in a card game application
  2. Amazon Q Developer automatically started a code review, analyzed code quality, potential issues, and adherence to best practices. A concise summary appeared at the top, with individual findings threaded underneath. This gave me the big picture and the specifics in one place.
    •  GitHub pull request interface showing a notification that Amazon Q Developer has automatically initiated a code review and is analyzing the changes, with a progress indicator
    • GitHub interface displaying Amazon Q Developer's completed review with a concise summary at the top and detailed findings organized in threaded comments below, highlighting code quality issues and suggested improvements
  3. Code review the summary and findings: I reviewed the summary and threaded findings to decide which change to take on first. Seeing both the rationale and the exact lines called out meant I knew where to begin, without hunting through files.
    •         GitHub interface showing Amazon Q Developer's threaded findings, where each finding is organized as a separate comment thread with detailed explanations of identified issues in the code
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  4. Ask for clarification with /q: One of the findings suggested using state property to track the card status in my card game application. so I asked Q Developer for clarification. It responded quickly with concrete context and pointers, which reduced back and forth and improved the quality of the review.
    •         Screenshot showing a conversation thread where a developer uses the /q command to ask Amazon Q Developer for clarification about state property implementation in the card game
    •         GitHub interface displaying Amazon Q Developer's detailed response to the clarification request, providing context and specific explanations about the state property implementation recommendation
  5. Continue the conversation (if needed): I reviewed Q Developer’s suggestion and responded back stating that I preferred an alternate approach and Q Developer quickly returned a complete implementation I could apply in the PR.
    •      GitHub interface showing a follow-up exchange between the developer and Amazon Q Developer, where the developer proposes an alternate approach and receives implementation suggestions
  6. Apply fixes: After reviewing the implementation suggestion, I clicked on Commit suggestion to create a new commit on the PR branch with my username as the author.
  7. Re-run the review: I didn’t need this for my example, but if you push additional changes, you can run a fresh analysis by posting /q review as a new top-level comment. Q Developer will run the review and post updated findings.

With the code review complete and checks passing, I merged. The new interactive code review experience reduced wait time and review cycles and made the “why” behind each finding and suggested change clear.

Conclusion

Amazon Q Developer for GitHub is available today in preview. Whether you are an individual developer or part of a large engineering team, this update helps you ship cleaner code with fewer cycles and makes code reviews something to look forward to rather than avoid.
Try it out on your next PR. Type /q, ask a question, and see how smarter conversational reviews transform your workflow.