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💎 Compliance

Platforms supported: GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket

Overview

The compliance tool performs comprehensive compliance checks on PR code changes, validating them against security standards, ticket requirements, and custom organizational compliance checklists, thereby helping teams, enterprises, and agents maintain consistent code quality and security practices while ensuring that development work aligns with business requirements.

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Example Usage

Manual Triggering

Invoke the tool manually by commenting /compliance on any PR. The compliance results are presented in a comprehensive table:

To edit configurations related to the compliance tool, use the following template:

/compliance --pr_compliance.some_config1=... --pr_compliance.some_config2=...

For example, you can enable ticket compliance labels by running:

/compliance --pr_compliance.enable_ticket_labels=true

Automatic Triggering

The tool can be triggered automatically every time a new PR is opened, or in a push event to an existing PR.

To run the compliance tool automatically when a PR is opened, define the following in the configuration file:

[github_app]  # for example
pr_commands = [
    "/compliance",
    ...
]

Compliance Categories

The compliance tool evaluates three main categories:

1. Security Compliance

Scans for security vulnerabilities and potential exploits in the PR code changes:

  • Verified Security Concerns 🔴: Clear security vulnerabilities that require immediate attention
  • Possible Security Risks ⚪: Potential security issues that need human verification
  • No Security Concerns 🟢: No security vulnerabilities detected

Examples of security issues:

  • Exposure of sensitive information (API keys, passwords, secrets)
  • SQL injection vulnerabilities
  • Cross-site scripting (XSS) risks
  • Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities
  • Insecure data handling patterns

2. Ticket Compliance

How to set up ticket compliance

Follow the guide on how to set up ticket compliance with Qodo Merge.

Auto-create ticket

Follow this guide to learn how to enable triggering create tickets based on PR content.

ticket creation via compliance tool

Validates that PR changes fulfill the requirements specified in linked tickets:

  • Fully Compliant 🟢: All ticket requirements are satisfied
  • Partially Compliant 🟡: Some requirements are met, others need attention
  • Not Compliant 🔴: Clear violations of ticket requirements
  • Requires Verification ⚪: Requirements that need human review

3. Custom Compliance

Validates against an organization-specific compliance checklist:

  • Fully Compliant 🟢: All custom compliance are satisfied
  • Not Compliant 🔴: Violations of custom compliance
  • Requires Verification ⚪: Compliance that need human assessment

Custom Compliance

Setting Up Custom Compliance

Each compliance is defined in a YAML file as follows:

  • title (required): A clear, descriptive title that identifies what is being checked
  • compliance_label (required): Determines whether this compliance generates labels for non-compliance issues (set to true or false)
  • objective (required): A detailed description of the goal or purpose this compliance aims to achieve
  • success_criteria and failure_criteria (at least one required; both recommended): Define the conditions for compliance
Example of a compliance checklist 
# pr_compliance_checklist.yaml
pr_compliances:
  - title: "Error Handling"
    compliance_label: true
    objective: "All external API calls must have proper error handling"
    success_criteria: "Try-catch blocks around external calls with appropriate logging"
    failure_criteria: "External API calls without error handling or logging"

...
Writing effective compliance checklists
  • Avoid overly complex or subjective compliances that are hard to verify
  • Keep compliances focused on security, business requirements, and critical standards
  • Use clear, actionable language that developers can understand
  • Focus on meaningful compliance requirements, not style preferences

Local Compliance Checklists

For basic usage, create a pr_compliance_checklist.yaml file in your repository's root directory containing the compliance requirements specific to your repository.

The AI model will use this pr_compliance_checklist.yaml file as a reference, and if the PR code violates any of the compliance requirements, it will be shown in the compliance tool's comment.

Global Hierarchical Compliance

Qodo Merge supports hierarchical compliance checklists using a dedicated global configuration repository.

Setting up global hierarchical compliance

1. Create a new repository named pr-agent-settings in your organization or workspace.

2. Build the folder hierarchy in your pr-agent-settings repository:

pr-agent-settings/
├── metadata.yaml                              # Maps repos/folders to compliance paths
└── compliance_standards/                      # Root for all compliance definitions
    ├── global/                                # Global compliance, inherited widely
    │   └── pr_compliance_checklist.yaml
    ├── groups/                                # For groups of repositories
    │   ├── frontend_repos/
    │   │   └── pr_compliance_checklist.yaml
    │   ├── backend_repos/
    │   │   └── pr_compliance_checklist.yaml
    │   ├── python_repos/
    │   │   └── pr_compliance_checklist.yaml
    │   ├── cpp_repos/
    │   │   └── pr_compliance_checklist.yaml
    │   └── ...
    ├── qodo-merge/                            # For standalone repositories
    │   └── pr_compliance_checklist.yaml
    ├──  qodo-monorepo/                        # For monorepo-specific compliance
    │   ├── pr_compliance_checklist.yaml       # Root-level monorepo compliance
    │   ├── qodo-github/                       # Subproject compliance
    │   │   └── pr_compliance_checklist.yaml
    │   └── qodo-gitlab/                       # Another subproject
    │       └── pr_compliance_checklist.yaml
    └── ...                                    # More repositories
Grouping and categorizing compliance checklists
  • Each folder (including the global folder) can contain a single pr_compliance_checklist.yaml file
  • Organize repository compliance checklists by creating subfolders within the groups folder. Group them by purpose, programming languages, or other categories

3. Define the metadata file metadata.yaml in the root of pr-agent-settings:

# Standalone repos
qodo-merge:
  pr_compliance_checklist_paths:
    - "qodo-merge"

# Group-associated repos
repo_b:
  pr_compliance_checklist_paths:
    - "groups/backend_repos"

# Multi-group repos
repo_c:
  pr_compliance_checklist_paths:
    - "groups/frontend_repos"
    - "groups/backend_repos"

# Monorepo with subprojects
qodo-monorepo:
  pr_compliance_checklist_paths:
    - "qodo-monorepo"
  monorepo_subprojects:
    frontend:
      pr_compliance_checklist_paths:
        - "qodo-monorepo/qodo-github"
    backend:
      pr_compliance_checklist_paths:
        - "qodo-monorepo/qodo-gitlab"

4. Set the following configuration:

[pr_compliance]
enable_global_pr_compliance = true
Compliance checklist loading strategy

  1. Global Checklists: Hierarchical compliance from pr-agent-settings repository

    1.1 If the repository is mapped in metadata.yaml, it uses the specified paths and the global compliance checklist

    1.2 For monorepos, it automatically collects compliance checklists matching PR file paths

    1.3 If the repository is not mapped in metadata.yaml, global checklists are not loaded

  2. Local Repository Checklist: pr_compliance_checklist.yaml file in the repository

    2.1 Loaded if present in the repository

    2.2 Content is merged with global checklists (if loaded) to create the final compliance checklist

Configuration Options

General options

extra_instructions Optional extra instructions for the tool. For example: "Ensure that all error-handling paths in the code contain appropriate logging statements". Default is empty string.
persistent_comment If set to true, the compliance comment will be persistent, meaning that every new compliance request will edit the previous one. Default is true.
enable_user_defined_compliance_labels If set to true, the tool will add the label Failed compliance check for custom compliance violations. Default is true.
enable_estimate_effort_to_review If set to true, the tool will estimate the effort required to review the PR (1-5 scale) as a label. Default is true.
enable_todo_scan If set to true, the tool will scan for TODO comments in the PR code. Default is false.
enable_update_pr_compliance_checkbox If set to true, the tool will add an update checkbox to refresh compliance status following push events. Default is true.
enable_help_text If set to true, the tool will display help text in the comment. Default is false.

Security compliance options

enable_security_compliance If set to true, the tool will check for security vulnerabilities. Default is true.
enable_compliance_labels_security If set to true, the tool will add a Possible security concern label to the PR when security-related concerns are detected. Default is true.

Ticket compliance options

enable_ticket_labels If set to true, the tool will add ticket compliance labels to the PR. Default is false.
enable_no_ticket_labels If set to true, the tool will add a label when no ticket is found. Default is false.
check_pr_additional_content If set to true, the tool will check if the PR contains content not related to the ticket. Default is false.

Usage Tips

Blocking PRs Based on Compliance

You can configure CI/CD Actions to prevent merging PRs with specific compliance labels:

  • Possible security concern - Block PRs with potential security issues
  • Failed compliance check - Block PRs that violate custom compliance checklists

Implement a dedicated GitHub Action to enforce these checklists.

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