Buildkite Code Review Pipeline Example

This example demonstrates an AI-powered code review pipeline built with Buildkite dynamic pipelines and Claude Code. Adding a label to a GitHub PR triggers an AI agent that reviews the pull request and posts feedback.

👉 See this example in action: buildkite/code-review-pipeline-example

How it works

1. You add a buildkite-review label to a GitHub PR
2. GitHub sends a webhook to Buildkite, which starts a build
3. The first step evaluates the webhook payload — if it's not a label event, the build exits early
4. A TypeScript handler reads the payload, validates the PR, and posts an acknowledgement comment
5. The handler uses the Buildkite SDK to dynamically generate a code review step and uploads it with buildkite-agent pipeline upload
6. That step launches Claude Code in a Docker container to review the PR and post feedback

The handler pattern

The core of the handler is short — read the webhook payload from build metadata, evaluate whether to act, and generate a step with the Buildkite SDK:

// 1. Read the webhook payload that Buildkite stored as build metadata
const payload = JSON.parse(
  execSync("buildkite-agent meta-data get buildkite:webhook").toString(),
);

// 2. Evaluate the condition — right event, right label?
if (payload.action !== "labeled" || payload.label.name !== process.env.TRIGGER_ON_LABEL) {
  process.exit(0);
}

// 3. Generate a step with the Buildkite SDK and pipe it into `pipeline upload`
const pipeline = new Pipeline();
pipeline.addStep({ label: ":mag: Review the PR", command: "scripts/claude.sh" });
execSync("buildkite-agent pipeline upload", { input: pipeline.toYAML() });

The real handler also validates the PR exists and posts an acknowledgement comment between steps 2 and 3 — see scripts/handler.ts.

The key Buildkite features at play:

• buildkite-agent pipeline upload — adding steps to a running build based on runtime conditions
• buildkite-agent meta-data — reading webhook payloads stored as build metadata
• @buildkite/buildkite-sdk — programmatically generating pipeline YAML in TypeScript
• Buildkite webhooks — triggering builds from external events
• Buildkite Hosted Models — proxying LLM requests through Buildkite's model provider endpoint

What's interesting about this?

Like the self-healing pipeline example, this pipeline has no fixed steps. The webhook payload determines whether anything runs at all, and what runs is generated programmatically at build time. This is a different flavour of the same dynamic pipelines pattern — instead of remediating a failure, it's performing an intelligent review.

Setup

To run this yourself, you'll need:

• A Buildkite account
• A GitHub repository with a Buildkite pipeline configured to receive webhooks
• An Anthropic API key (or use Buildkite Hosted Models)
• Docker installed on your Buildkite agent

1. Fork this repo
2. Create a Buildkite pipeline pointing to your fork with webhook support enabled
3. Configure a GitHub webhook to send pull_request events with the labeled action to Buildkite
4. Set up the required secrets: GITHUB_TOKEN and BUILDKITE_API_TOKEN
5. Add the buildkite-review label to any PR

Known limitations

• The handler assumes the Buildkite org slug and pipeline slug match the GitHub org and repo name. This won't always be the case — you may need to configure these separately.

Credits

Originally built by Grant Colegate and Christian Nunciato as a demo for AWS re:Invent.

License

See LICENSE (MIT)