Install
// faq

FAQ

Common questions about installing, configuring, and running CommitBrief.

Cost

+ How much does a review cost?

It depends on your provider’s per-token pricing and the size of the diff plus your COMMITBRIEF.md. Run any command with --verbose to see the actual token counts and cost for that run.

Two CommitBrief features keep cost low:

  1. Local response cache. Re-running on an identical diff (same provider, model, language, schema) is a disk read — zero token spend. The verbose footer prints Saved: $X for cache hits.
  2. Provider prompt caching. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini all discount repeated input prefixes. CommitBrief structures the prompt to maximize cache hit rate; the verbose footer reports provider cached: N tokens.

commitbrief compress can additionally shrink your COMMITBRIEF.md itself (see --level light|balanced|aggressive).

Privacy

+ Can I run it fully offline?

Yes — pick Ollama as the provider. The CLI then talks only to http://localhost:11434 (or whatever you’ve configured); no API key is required and no diff leaves your machine.

CommitBrief itself never makes outbound network calls beyond the provider you chose. There is no telemetry endpoint, no auto-update check, no analytics beacon.

General

+ What is CommitBrief?

CommitBrief is a Go CLI that runs LLM-powered code reviews on git diffs — staged, unstaged, or any historic range git diff understands via the commitbrief diff <args> subcommand (single commit, branch vs target, PR-style three-dot range, etc.). It runs locally; the only network egress is to the provider you chose.

It is not a SaaS, a dashboard, a GitHub App, or a bot. There is no account, no server-side state, and no telemetry.

+ Which provider should I pick?

Six providers ship in v1.0 — four HTTPS API backends plus two subprocess wrappers around host CLI tools. Use whichever fits your billing and trust model.

API providers (need an API key, billed per-token):

  • Anthropic (default): best output quality on code review tasks in our experience; ephemeral prompt caching makes repeat runs cheap.
  • OpenAI: comparable quality; automatic prompt caching at ≥1024-token prefixes.
  • Gemini: largest free-tier context windows (2 M with 2.5 Pro). Good when your COMMITBRIEF.md is unusually large.
  • Ollama: zero cost, zero network egress, runs on your own GPU. Best for SOC2-restricted repos or air-gapped environments.

CLI-tool-backed providers (no API key, reuse existing subscription):

  • claude-cli: drives your locally-installed Claude Code (claude) binary as a subprocess. Auth + billing handled by your Claude Code subscription. Output is pre-formatted plain text — no --json or --fail-on severity gating.
  • gemini-cli: same idea against Google’s Gemini CLI (gemini).

Run commitbrief setup to configure the four API providers interactively, or invoke a CLI-backed one directly with commitbrief --cli claude / --cli gemini.