Concise Mode

Concise mode reduces noise in Codity PR comments by consolidating findings into a single high-signal summary instead of many inline comments.

Overview

By default, Codity posts detailed inline comments on PRs and merge requests, with one comment per finding including suggested fixes and code snippets. For teams who prefer a more compact review — especially on large PRs or for reviewers who want to triage quickly — concise mode collapses this output into a single consolidated comment with only the highest-priority findings.

Concise mode is off by default and can be configured at both the organization and repository level.

What Concise Mode Changes

When concise mode is on:

  • Consolidated output: Findings are rendered as a single PR-level markdown table (Severity · Location · Issue) instead of many inline comments
  • Higher priority bar: Only critical, high, and medium priority findings are included — low priority and informational items are filtered out
  • Focus on actionable categories: Only security, functional, robustness, and performance findings are shown — style, readability, and maintainability nitpicks are filtered out
  • Higher confidence bar: Only findings with confidence ≥ 75 are shown, reducing speculative suggestions
  • Compact rendering: Code suggestions and code snippets are omitted from the output; each finding shows severity, location, and a brief description
  • Merged summary sections: PR summary, workflow diagrams, and quality scores are combined into a single comment instead of separate ones
  • Terse scan results: Security, dependency, and license scan results are rendered in compact tables

When concise mode is off (default):

  • Full inline comments appear on specific lines of code
  • All priorities are shown, including low and informational
  • All categories are shown, including style and readability
  • Each finding includes code suggestions, code snippets, and detailed explanations

Expected Impact

Teams typically see 60–75% fewer findings surfaced on a PR when concise mode is enabled, because of the category, priority, and confidence filtering. The findings that remain are the most actionable ones.

When to Use Concise Mode

Concise mode is a good fit when:

  • Your team prefers lightweight reviews that call out only the highest-impact issues
  • Large PRs are generating too many inline comments to action
  • You want scan results (security, license, dependencies) summarized rather than reported one-by-one
  • Style and readability nits are handled by other tooling (linters, formatters) and shouldn't be re-surfaced by Codity

The default (verbose) mode is a better fit when:

  • You want complete coverage, including low-priority suggestions
  • Developers benefit from inline code suggestions they can apply directly
  • Style and readability feedback from Codity is valuable

Organization-Level Configuration

Organization-level settings define the default concise mode behavior for every repository in your organization.

Enabling Concise Mode at the Organization Level

  1. Navigate to Settings in the Codity dashboard
  2. Scroll to the Scan configuration section
  3. Toggle Concise mode to ON
  4. Changes save automatically

When concise mode is enabled at the organization level:

  • All repositories in the organization use concise mode by default
  • New repositories added to the organization will inherit the setting
  • Individual repositories can override this setting

Disabling Concise Mode at the Organization Level

  1. Navigate to Settings in the Codity dashboard
  2. Scroll to the Scan configuration section
  3. Toggle Concise mode to OFF
  4. Changes save automatically

Repository-Level Configuration

Repository-level settings let you override the organization default for specific repositories. This is useful when most of your repositories should use one output style but a few (for example, critical production repos) need the other.

Setting Concise Mode for a Specific Repository

  1. Navigate to Settings in the Codity dashboard
  2. Scroll to the Scan configuration section
  3. Expand Per-repository overrides
  4. Find the repository you want to configure (use the search box if needed)
  5. Click the Concise mode cell for that repository to cycle through its state:
    • Inherit — follow the organization default (shown as a dash)
    • On — force concise mode on for this repository
    • Off — force concise mode off for this repository
  6. Changes save automatically

Tri-State Behavior

Each repository's concise mode toggle has three states:

  • Inherit (default): The repository uses the organization-level setting. If the organization default changes, this repository follows.
  • On: Concise mode is always on for this repository, regardless of the organization setting.
  • Off: Concise mode is always off for this repository, regardless of the organization setting.

Setting a repository override back to Inherit clears it and re-inherits the organization value.

Settings Precedence

Codity resolves the concise mode setting through a simple hierarchy on every PR/MR:

  1. Repository override — used if set to On or Off
  2. Organization default — used if the repository is set to Inherit
  3. System default — OFF (verbose inline comments)

Precedence Examples

Organization settingRepository overrideActual behavior
Concise: OFFInheritVerbose inline comments
Concise: ONInheritConsolidated concise output
Concise: OFFOnConsolidated concise output (override)
Concise: ONOffVerbose inline comments (override)

Output Format

When concise mode is active, findings are rendered as a markdown table with severity icons:

  • Critical
  • High
  • Medium
  • Low (excluded from concise output)

Each row shows the severity, file and line location, and a brief issue description. The table appears as a single PR-level comment rather than being distributed across many inline comments.