Documentation

Getting Started

DevSignal pulls a developer's recent GitHub activity — pull requests, code reviews, issues, and commits — and uses AI to generate a structured report with analysis and actionable insights.

Reports can be used for 1:1 meetings, performance reviews, sprint retrospectives, self-reflection, or any context where you need a clear picture of what someone has been working on.

Quick start

1. Sign up — Create an account with your GitHub login at app.devsignal.app/signup.
2. Install the GitHub App — An org owner (or your personal account) needs to install the DevSignal GitHub App. This is what gives DevSignal read access to activity data. See Installing the GitHub App below.
3. Select your org — On first login, you'll pick which organization or personal account to work with.
4. Generate a report — Pick a developer, timeframe, and optionally scope to specific repos. Hit Run and your report generates in about 15 seconds.

Installing the GitHub App

DevSignal uses a GitHub App to read activity data from your repositories. The app requests read-only access — it never writes to your repos, creates issues, or modifies anything.

For organization owners

1. Go to Settings → Integrations in DevSignal.
2. Click “Add another Org/Account” — this opens the GitHub App installation page.
3. Select the organization you want to connect and approve the permissions.
4. Once installed, all members of that org can sign in to DevSignal and generate reports.

For personal accounts

You can install the app on your personal GitHub account to generate reports about your own activity across personal repos. Follow the same steps above — just select your personal account instead of an org.

What the app can access

• Pull requests, reviews, and review comments
• Issues and issue comments
• Commits and commit messages
• Repository metadata (names, visibility)
• Organization membership (to populate the contributor list)

DevSignal never stores your source code. It only reads activity metadata (titles, descriptions, comments) to generate reports.

Generating Reports

The main screen has a compact query bar where you configure your report. Here's what each field does:

Click Run (or press Enter) to generate the report. Generation typically takes 10–20 seconds depending on the volume of activity.

Saving and sharing

Every report is automatically saved and appears in Recent Reports in the sidebar. You can also:

• Copy to clipboard — Pastes cleanly into Google Docs, Notion, Slack, or email with formatting preserved.
• Download as PDF — Opens a print dialog. Choose “Save as PDF” for a clean, styled document.

Understanding Reports

Reports have two parts: AI-generated analysis at the top, and a raw Activity Log at the bottom.

Report sections

DevSignal generates a Developer Activity report. Both self-reports and teammate reports use the same sections — the only difference is tone (second person “you/your” for self-reports, third person for teammates).

Activity Log

The bottom of every report includes a raw Activity Log — a structured list of all PRs, reviews, issues, and commits that were analyzed. This is generated directly from GitHub data (not AI), so it's always accurate. Each item links back to GitHub.

Smart Search

Smart Search lets you ask questions across your existing reports using natural language. It's like having a conversation about your team's recent activity.

How it works

1. Navigate to Smart Search in the sidebar.
2. Type a question or click one of the suggestion cards.
3. DevSignal searches your recent reports for the current org and uses AI to answer your question.
4. Ask follow-up questions in the same conversation.

Example questions

• “Summarize team activity from the last week”
• “Who has been most active recently?”
• “Which PRs had the most discussion?”
• “What issues or risks have been flagged?”
• “What are the key themes across recent reports?”

Smart Search uses your saved reports as context — the more reports you've generated, the richer the answers.

Organizations & Access

DevSignal works with GitHub organizations, personal accounts, and individual repositories. Here's how access works for each.

Your Organizations

These are GitHub orgs where you are a member. Your personal account also appears here. When you select an org, the developer list shows all org members, and repos show all org repos.

Outside Collaborator orgs

If you're an outside collaborator on another user's account or org (meaning they've installed the GitHub App and granted you access to specific repos), those appear separately. You'll see repos you have access to, not the full org.

Switching organizations

Click the org name at the top of the sidebar to open the org picker. Your selection is saved — next time you log in, you'll be right where you left off.

Manual entry & open source repos

The org picker includes a Manual Entry option where you can type any owner/repo path directly. This is especially useful for open source repositories — you can generate a report for any contributor on any public repo, even if you don't own it and don't have the GitHub App installed there.

For example, entering facebook/react lets you generate a report for any React contributor. The developer list shows that repo's collaborators and the repo field is locked to that single repo.

No GitHub App installation is required for public repos — manual entry works with any repo you can see on GitHub.

Settings

Access Settings from the sidebar. There are three sections:

Integrations

View and manage your GitHub App installations. You can see which orgs and accounts are connected, and add new ones. Removing an installation is done from GitHub's settings (the link is provided).

Usage

Track your token usage for the current billing period. Shows a usage bar, number of reports generated this period, total lifetime reports, and when your usage resets.

Account

View your profile (GitHub avatar, name, username), your GitHub email, and an optional contact email. The “Danger Zone” section allows you to permanently delete your account and all associated data.

Troubleshooting