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Rafał Szymański
Rafał Szymański

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🧠 I built a tiny AI code review tool for GitLab – mostly for myself, maybe useful for you too

Hey dev.to! 👋

I wanted to share a small tool I recently built - something that solves a real daily annoyance I had as a developer.

It’s called MergeReque.st, and it helps automate code reviews with AI – without being heavy, complicated, or trying to replace humans.

Not another code quality platform. Just a tool that saves time and repetition. That’s it.

💬 The problem

Like many developers, I noticed I was writing the same code review comments over and over again:

"Please rename this variable to something more descriptive."

"This breaks our project conventions."

Doing this daily started to feel like a waste of time 😩

So I decided to automate the boring parts, while keeping full control over what’s being said.

🔧 What I built

A small app that:

  1. Connects to your GitLab account via token
  2. Fetches your repositories and open merge requests
  3. Lets you define your code review standards in a simple knowledge base
  4. Generates suggested comments using AI (based on your rules)
  5. Lets you edit and publish those comments with one click

🛠️ Tech stack

I wanted to build a working MVP fast, so I used:

Next.js – backend + frontend in one project

Shipfa.st – a great boilerplate for SaaS apps (not sponsored, just genuinely useful)

🧪 Who it’s for

In short:

  • Developers who do frequent code reviews
  • Teams with custom coding standards that get ignored unless enforced
  • People who want something that just works, without pitching it to 3 managers first

I made it for myself, but if you’re in a similar spot, it might help you too.

💰 Pricing?

🆓 Free plan – 1 MR review per day, to verify if the tool is good for you

💵 $10/month – up to 20 reviews per day (~400/month). To be honest, it’s hard to hit that limit unless you’re doing nothing but reviews.

Here is a movie that shows it in action:

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