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Overview

GitHub is a one-click connector that gives Rootly AI read access to the repositories covered by your Rootly AI GitHub App installation. During an investigation, Rootly AI can inspect recent commits and pull requests, search code, read repository files, and look up repository or team ownership context without a responder switching tabs. Every exposed tool is read-only. Rootly pins a reviewed set of GitHub MCP tools and sends GitHub read-only mode on every request. Rootly AI cannot push code, comment on issues or pull requests, merge changes, or modify repositories.

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Before You Start

  • A GitHub organization you have permission to install third-party GitHub Apps on.
  • Permission to install the Rootly AI GitHub App for that organization — GitHub org Owners can install directly; other roles need install rights granted by an Owner.

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Setup

Open AI & Agents → Connectors and click Connect on the GitHub card. Sign in to GitHub and install the Rootly AI GitHub App for the organization you want to connect — choose All repositories for broad coverage, or Only select repositories to scope Rootly AI to a specific set. When the install completes, the card flips to Connected.

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What Rootly AI Can Read

  • Repositories and refs — repository search, branches, tags, and releases.
  • Commits and code — commit lookup and search, commit history, code search, and bounded repository-file contents.
  • Pull requests and issues — list, search, and read operations, including pull request details and diffs supported by GitHub’s MCP tool.
  • Ownership context — teams, team members, repository collaborators, users, issue metadata, and labels.
Rootly AI reaches for GitHub when a question is about “what changed?” — pairing it with an observability connector (Sentry, Datadog) gives the strongest “what caused this?” signal.

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During an Incident

“This error started after this pull request merged. Here’s the diff that likely caused it.” Rootly AI correlates a spike in errors with commits and merged pull requests around the affected window, then reads the relevant diff or repository file when the evidence points to a code path. The investigation can cite the source change and use team or collaborator data to identify likely ownership without claiming that GitHub supplied deployment telemetry it doesn’t expose.

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Best Practices

  • Install with broad repo access. Rootly AI can only see repositories the GitHub App installation covers. Selecting a narrow set means Rootly AI can’t find a relevant commit, pull request, release, or file in an unselected repository — choose All repositories unless you have a specific reason to restrict.
  • Keep repository and team ownership current. Rootly AI can read team members, collaborators, and repository files such as CODEOWNERS when it knows the path. Stale GitHub ownership data leads to stale suggestions.
  • Pair with a CI/CD connector. GitHub tells Rootly AI what changed; a CI connector (Semaphore, or your team’s own via Custom) tells it whether the deploy pipeline succeeded.

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Troubleshooting

The Rootly AI GitHub App installation doesn’t cover those repos. On the GitHub side, open Settings → GitHub Apps → Rootly AI → Configure, then either switch to All repositories or add the missing repos to the selected list. Rootly AI will pick up the new scope on the next investigation — no reconnect needed.
Team membership, repository collaborators, or CODEOWNERS may be out of date, or the file may not be covered by a CODEOWNERS pattern. Update the relevant GitHub source; Rootly AI will read the current data on the next investigation.
If a GitHub admin uninstalls the Rootly AI GitHub App from the organization, Rootly’s card still shows Connected but every query fails. Reconnect from Rootly to reinstall the app.

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Frequently Asked Questions

No. The GitHub connector is read-only. Rootly AI can read GitHub data but never invoke write actions through this connector.
Coverage depends on how your GitHub Enterprise instance is reachable. Contact support if you’re on a self-hosted GitHub Enterprise Server and want to confirm compatibility.
Rootly doesn’t maintain a full replica of GitHub. Queries run at investigation time. Raw GitHub tool results and the response derived from them are replaced with omission markers in durable AI session history, but GitHub evidence can still appear in the completed AI SRE report and in LLM traces used for quality monitoring. See Data Privacy for Rootly AI for the retention boundary.

Connectors Overview

All connectors and how they fit together.

Sentry

Pair GitHub with Sentry for the strongest “what caused this?” signal.

Data Privacy for Rootly AI

What Rootly AI sees, retention, and model training controls.