Classify every merged pull request by the work it contains

Tag each merged change as feature, quality, maintenance or documentation work, and watch the mix as change volume grows.

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Prompt

Evaluate and apply this CI technique to my repository: Classify every merged pull request by the work it contains.

Tag each merged change as feature, quality, maintenance or documentation work, and watch the mix as change volume grows.

Read the technique and its source-backed company examples: https://starsling.dev/ci-playbooks/techniques/classify-merged-prs.md

Inspect this repository’s CI workflows, build and test commands, dependencies, and recent run timings. Identify where this technique applies and explain the expected benefit using this repository’s evidence.
Measure a baseline from recent comparable runs: elapsed time, queue time, runner minutes and failures where available. If data is unavailable, say what cannot be measured.
Compare relevant company approaches, checking prerequisites, platform differences and tradeoffs. Rank applicable options by evidence, fit and measurable opportunity; do not present company results as predictions for this repo.
Recommend the smallest safe change, show what checks and fallback paths remain, and ASK ME WHICH CHANGE TO APPROVE BEFORE EDITING ANY FILES.
Only after approval, work on a new feature branch, make one reversible change, and open a reviewable pull request. Never merge or push to a default or protected branch.
Keep required checks, test coverage, deployment and release behavior intact. Validate the change and compare equivalent runs where possible; report limitations and what should be monitored after merge.

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How Spotify used this technique

Read what Spotify changed and follow the original sources.

Classify every merged pull request by the work it contains

Spotify classifies every merged pull request as features, code quality and optimization, maintenance, or documentation. Total merged changes more than doubled year over year in August, quality and optimization work rose from 27% of the mix to 31%, and maintenance and configuration fell from 31% to 25%. In each monthly incident review Spotify also asks whether AI-authored code contributed directly, and whether the increased volume of change put pressure on review, testing, rollout or observability.

Spotify reports that total merged changes more than doubled year over year in August, from roughly 8,100 to 17,000. Source

Use it when: Agents are raising the number of pull requests, and the team wants to see whether review, testing and rollout keep pace.
Before applying it: A classification is as good as its labels. Define the categories once and apply them to every merged change.

How Spotify used this technique

Classify every merged pull request by the work it contains

Company Playbooks