bobby
What leaves your machine
Bobby runs on your machine: the review UI is served by Bobby itself on 127.0.0.1 (unless you open it up with --host), and your marks, drafts and notes stay in ~/.bobby. These are the times it talks to something else, and how to turn each off.
| What | Where it goes | When | To turn it off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Code you ask Claude about | Anthropic, through your claude CLI and its login | Only when you ask about some lines: the PR's title, that file's diff, your question and the conversation so far, and what Claude chooses to look at: files in a copy of the head commit (Read, Grep and Glob, inside that copy) and Bobby's tools (the PR's diff, files before and after it, definitions and uses, the review threads, git history) | Don't ask |
| Your tools, if you turn them on | The services behind the MCP servers and claude.ai connectors you allow (Linear, Notion, Slack, Datadog…), through Claude Code, with your logins there | Only those you chose, with --agent-tools or for that PR, when Claude decides to look something up; read-only unless you chose All | Off unless chosen |
| The PR, for Claude's review | Anthropic, through your claude CLI and its login | Only when you press Review with Claude: the PR's title, description and files, and what Claude chooses to look at, as above | Don't press it |
| The PR, to organise it | Anthropic, through your claude CLI and its login | When claude is installed, in the background on each new head commit | --no-llm, or no claude |
| PR metadata, comments, the code | GitHub, through gh and git | Reading the PR, fetching and cloning, posting your review when you submit; the Conversation view reads the PR's comments, reviews and CI checks while it's open, and posts a comment or reply when you send one; resolving or unresolving a thread, and editing or deleting your own comment, reach GitHub at once | Review a local branch (bobby with no PR) |
| Avatars | avatars.githubusercontent.com / github.com, from Bobby's server | Showing who wrote a comment; cached a week in ~/.bobby/cache/avatars | |
| Images in comments | GitHub's image proxy (camo.githubusercontent.com) and GitHub's attachment hosts, from your browser | Showing images and badges in the Conversation view's comments, as github.com does | |
| Fonts | Google Fonts, from your browser | Loading the UI | |
| Language servers | The npm registry | Only after you say yes to installing one (or run bobby lsp install) | Say Not now or Never |
The install script, bobby update | GitHub releases | Installing or updating Bobby | |
| Setting up GitHub CLI | GitHub (api.github.com for gh's latest release, then its download, and GitHub's sign-in) | Only when you press Install GitHub CLI or Get a sign-in code in Bobby's setup | Not now or Don't ask again |
| Setting up Claude Code | claude.ai (Anthropic's installer, then its sign-in) | Only when you press Install Claude Code or Sign in in Bobby's setup | Not now or Don't ask again |
| New versions | GitHub's releases API (no login, nothing about you or your code) | At start and every 6 hours, at most once in 6 hours across runs | Settings › Tell me about new versions, or BOBBY_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1 |
What Claude is sent
With claude available and no --no-llm, Bobby asks Claude to group the PR's changes into core changes and order them. The prompt holds:
- the PR's title and the first 3,000 characters of its description;
- each changed unit: its file and symbols, and its hunks' lines (up to 120 per hunk, and about 160,000 characters in all);
- how the units depend on each other;
- unchanged lines that declare or use what the changes touch: each one's file, line and up to 160 characters of its text.
It runs claude -p with no tools and no saved session, from a temporary directory, so Claude reads only what's in the prompt. It uses your Claude Code login and its data terms. The answer is cached in ~/.bobby/cache, so the same head commit isn't sent twice.
What stays local
- Language servers read the PR's head commit exported to
~/.bobby/trees, and never run the PR's code. Go's runs with module and toolchain downloads off (GOPROXY=off,GOTOOLCHAIN=local) and without cgo. - Bobby's tools for Claude are served by Bobby at
/mcp/<token>, a fresh token for each run of Claude, gone when it ends; they only read. - Bobby's server only answers its own page: requests must name
127.0.0.1orlocalhost(or a name you allowed with--allow-host), and writes must come from the page at that same name. - Private notes are never posted. Drafts are posted only when you submit.