Fossabot: AI code review for Dependabot/Renovate on breaking changes and impacts • Hacker News Board

Re: Fossabot: AI code review for Dependabot/Renovate on breaking changes and impacts

#11

Post by timrogers » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 8:09 PM UTC

johnnyyw wrote: post #2

Why didn't GitHub come up with this? This seems like such an obvious use case.

GitHub PM here. We have tried this, but we weren't able to get results that we were satisfied with. Of course, you have to revisit these things regularly, as the models and wider state of the art are evolving so quickly!

Re: Fossabot: AI code review for Dependabot/Renovate on breaking changes and impacts

#12

Post by danudey » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

zingababba wrote: post #9

johnnyyw wrote: post #2

Why didn't GitHub come up with this? This seems like such an obvious use case.

GitHub hasn't done anything interesting with dependabot or code scanning for awhile.

They're spending all of their engineering resources on not doing anything interesting with Copilot instead.

Re: Fossabot: AI code review for Dependabot/Renovate on breaking changes and impacts

#13

Post by poetril » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

Fossabot[0] is also the name of an established Twitch/YouTube chat bot.

0: https://fossabot.com/

Re: Fossabot: AI code review for Dependabot/Renovate on breaking changes and impacts

#14

Post by ai-christianson » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

Cool to see this coming out of FOSSA (ex FOSSA here :))

Re: Fossabot: AI code review for Dependabot/Renovate on breaking changes and impacts

#15

Post by cchance » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 12:10 AM UTC

This seems great, i see you offer it as a service, but also its opensource (FOSS) ... how does the FOSS version differ from the commercial service?

Re: Fossabot: AI code review for Dependabot/Renovate on breaking changes and impacts

#16

Post by SkyPuncher » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 12:14 AM UTC

johnnyyw wrote: post #2

Why didn't GitHub come up with this? This seems like such an obvious use case.

Because this won't work. Dependency updates are actually incredibly hard.

Re: Fossabot: AI code review for Dependabot/Renovate on breaking changes and impacts

#17

Post by gregjw » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 12:47 AM UTC

Did they not Google the name before deciding upon it? Fossabot is a dominant player in online streaming chat moderation.

Re: Fossabot: AI code review for Dependabot/Renovate on breaking changes and impacts

#18

Post by viraptor » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 4:07 AM UTC

danudey wrote: post #12

zingababba wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub hasn't done anything interesting with dependabot or code scanning for awhile.

They're spending all of their engineering resources on not doing anything interesting with Copilot instead.

And not solving lots of small issues listed on... GitHub. The community project is such an issues graveyard.

Re: Fossabot: AI code review for Dependabot/Renovate on breaking changes and impacts

#19

Post by jamietanna » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 6:58 AM UTC

cchance wrote: post #15

This seems great, i see you offer it as a service, but also its opensource (FOSS) ... how does the FOSS version differ from the commercial service?

> also its opensource (FOSS)

Where did you see that? I must've missed it in the announcement