Bugbot: Per-repository effort levels for cost-aware reviews

Ideas Feature Requests
1

Feature request for product/service

BugBot

Describe the request

We use BugBot across multiple repositories that have very different sensitivity profiles and testing requirements.

Some repos are highly sensitive — security-critical code, core backend services, infrastructure — where we genuinely want high-effort reviews to maximize bug detection. Other repos are much lower risk: internal tools, simple frontends, low-impact utilities. For those, default effort is more than sufficient.

The problem is that effort configuration is currently global. If we set high effort globally, we pay elevated costs on every repo including ones that don’t need it. If we set default globally, we under-review the repos where Bugbot’s deeper reasoning actually matters most.

Proposed solution: per-repository effort level configuration

Allow teams to assign effort levels (Default / High / Custom) at the individual repository level from the Bugbot dashboard, instead of only globally. This would ideally include:

  • Per-repo effort setting (Default or High)
  • Per-repo custom rules — e.g., “use high effort only for PRs touching auth/, billing/, or infra/; default elsewhere”
  • Optionally, support this via a repo-level config file (e.g., .cursor/bugbot.md) so it’s version-controlled

Why this matters

  1. Cost control without sacrificing safety — High-effort reviews cost more and take longer. Per-repo effort lets us keep Bugbot spend predictable while still using deep reviews where they reduce real risk.
  2. Better alignment with actual risk profiles — Orgs have a mix of critical and low-impact repos. Treating all PRs identically is either wasteful or unsafe depending on which global setting you pick.
  3. Better DX — Devs on low-risk repos get faster, cheaper reviews without over-aggressive noise. Devs on security-critical repos get thorough reviews where Bugbot’s extra reasoning is most valuable.
  4. Natural evolution of existing effort levels — Cursor already supports Default/High/Custom effort for tuning cost vs depth. Extending that to the repository dimension feels like the next logical step, especially for teams on usage-based billing.
5

Hey thanks for the detailed feature request. The logic of deep reviews only where really needed is clear and justified.

Right now effort level in Bugbot is set globally at the owner level. There is no separate per-repository setting. I logged the request as a feature request. I can’t share a timeline for it yet.

What partially solves a similar task already is that BUGBOT.md supports per-directory files and they are version-controlled. You can add .cursor/BUGBOT.md at the project level and separate ones in subfolders like backend/.cursor/BUGBOT.md or frontend/.cursor/BUGBOT.md. Then reviews of those files will use the matching rules. This is about rules and context not effort itself but it helps match reviews to the risk level of each area. More details at Bugbot | Cursor Docs

One note effort level settings are only available on usage-based billing so you need that plan to change effort.

If there is an update on per-repo effort I’ll reply in the thread.

6

awesome!

Thanks @deanrie for the fast reply!

7

Piling on to this request is a way to change the effort per PR. I have some PRs that really need the high effort level, but most don’t.

@cursor review high or something like this in the comment would be good, but also adding these types of flags to the api so my tooling can post requests to the api with effort level.

8

@frank.west.iii Specifying the effort level in the comment is such a great idea!