Bugbot drip-feeds issues across rounds instead of surfacing all findings at once

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

BugBot

Describe the Bug

Bugbot appears to have a per-run budget that limits how many issues it surfaces per review. This means issues that exist in unchanged code get reported across multiple review rounds — each triggered by a push that fixes the previous round’s findings. The result is an avoidable push → wait → fix → push loop.

Bugbot produced 16 comments across 9 review rounds over the PR’s lifetime. Analysis:

Category Count %
Could have been caught in Round 1 (code unchanged) 12 75%
Genuinely new (introduced by fix commits) 4 25%
Exact re-reports of the same issue 3 19%

Timeline

Round Commit Comments New vs catchable earlier
1 37d9167b (initial) 2 2 new
2 899e086b (21h later) 3 All 3 existed in Round 1 code
3 7762df2b (26min later) 2 1 duplicate of Round 2, 1 existed in Round 1 code
4 d838cd4d (1 month later) 2 2 genuinely new (new code pushed)
5 bb88812c (51min later) 2 Both existed in Round 1 code
6 b96d4c2b (14min later) 1 Existed in Round 1 code
7 0f8e3c59 (17min later) 2 1 re-report of Round 2 issue, 1 genuinely new
8 57fa60fc (15min later) 1 Re-report of Round 6 issue
9 74d90e92 (37min later) 1 Genuinely new

Impact

Each round requires:

  1. Wait ~5-10 min for bugbot analysis
  2. Triage each comment (is it valid? already fixed?)
  3. Fix valid issues
  4. Push → triggers next round

For this PR, that was 9 cycles where 2-3 would have sufficed if all findings on unchanged code were surfaced in Round 1.

Suggestion

Surface all detected issues in a single review, rather than limiting per-run output. If there’s a budget constraint, at minimum:

  1. Don’t re-report issues on code that hasn’t changed between pushes — if the code at that file:line is identical to the previous review, skip it or mark it as “previously reported”
  2. Batch all findings on new code in one pass rather than spreading across rounds
  3. Don’t create duplicate threads for the same underlying issue.

Environment

  • GitHub repository with Cursor Bugbot integration
  • PR with 114 changed files, mix of TypeScript and JSON
  • Bugbot Autofix: OFF

Steps to Reproduce

Environment

  • GitHub repository with Cursor Bugbot integration
  • PR with 114 changed files, mix of TypeScript and JSON
  • Bugbot Autofix: OFF

Expected Behavior

Surface all detected issues in a single review, rather than limiting per-run output. If there’s a budget constraint, at minimum:

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

BugBot …

For AI issues: which model did you use?

Not sure which models BugBot uses

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

1 Like

Hi @GJ_DW, Thanks for reporting and providing a detailed table list - that format was easy to read and understand.

Regarding the Bugbot behavior you’ve noticed, that is expected - Bugbot does tend to surface additional, typically less critical issues in subsequent reviews. This is discussed in a similar thread here: Bugbot doesn't catch all issues on first pass - multiple review cycles needed