GitHub Repository Setup Guide

Last updated: February 19, 2026

Connect your GitHub repositories to Exceeds AI to start tracking AI tool impact, developer productivity, and code quality metrics. This comprehensive guide covers both GitHub App installation (recommended), along with detailed explanations of permissions, sync processes, and troubleshooting.

Connect with GitHub App

The GitHub App provides the best integration experience with automatic updates, fine-grained permissions, and organization-wide installation options.

Benefits of GitHub App

Real-Time Updates:

  • API delivers new insights from commits and PRs within seconds

  • No polling delays

  • Immediate dashboard updates

Granular Permissions:

  • Request only necessary read permissions

  • No write access necessary for code or settings

  • Read/write access requested for PRs for future features to share AI code quality insights during code review

  • Organization admins can review and approve

Easy Organization Management:

  • Install once for entire organization

  • Automatically includes new repositories (if configured)

  • No individual PAT management

Automatic Token Renewal:

  • No manual token refresh required

  • Installation continues working indefinitely

  • Reduces maintenance overhead

Managing the GitHub App

Adding More Repositories

After initial installation:

  1. Go to GitHub.com > Settings > Applications > Installed GitHub Apps

  2. Find "Exceeds AI"

  3. Click "Configure"

  4. Update repository access (add/remove repos)

  5. Save

  6. Return to Exceeds - new repos appear automatically and sync begins

Updating Permissions

If Exceeds adds new features requiring additional permissions:

  1. You'll see a banner in Exceeds Dashboard

  2. Click "Update Permissions"

  3. Review changes on GitHub

  4. Approve new permissions

Uninstalling

To remove Exceeds access:

  1. GitHub.com > Settings > Applications > Installed GitHub Apps

  2. Click "Exceeds AI" > "Uninstall"

  3. Exceeds data remains until you delete account

What Gets Analyzed

Commit Metadata

Example Data Collected:

  • Author: Name and email from git config

  • Timestamp: Commit date and time (UTC)

  • Files Changed: File paths only (not content)

  • Diff Stats: Number of lines added/deleted per file

  • Parent Commit: SHA for building commit graph

  • Branch: Which branch the commit is on

AI Tool Detection: Exceeds scans commit messages and metadata for signatures and uses proprietary internal analysis combined with explicit signals and implicit patterns to identify AI tools and models.

What is NOT Collected:

  • ❌ Source code content

  • ❌ File contents at any point

  • ❌ Secrets or credentials

Pull Request Data

Example Metadata Tracked:

  • Creator: Who opened the PR

  • Reviewers: Who was assigned/requested

  • Timestamps: Created, first review, approved, merged

  • Review Activity: Number of comments (not content)

  • Files Changed: Paths and line counts

Repository Statistics

Example Aggregate Data:

  • Contributor Count: Active developers in time period

  • Commit Frequency: Commits per day/week

  • Language Distribution: % of code in each language

  • Repository Size: Total lines of code (estimated)

  • Activity Patterns: Peak commit hours, days of week