How to Use GitHub Copilot & Other AI Tools for Code Review

Written By:
Founder & CTO
June 10, 2025

In today’s modern development ecosystem, AI code review and AI code completion tools are no longer futuristic concepts, they are now essential parts of the daily workflows of high-performing software teams. The rise of AI-powered developer tools has not only transformed the way code is written but also revolutionized the entire code review lifecycle.

GitHub Copilot, along with emerging tools like Cursor, Bolt, Lovable, and GoCodeo, have become a central force in boosting developer productivity, reducing bugs, enforcing standards, and increasing code quality across repositories and teams. These tools are designed to provide intelligent code suggestions, identify potential issues, offer improvements, and even guide junior developers through complex coding challenges.

This blog takes a deep dive into how developers can integrate GitHub Copilot and other AI code review tools into their workflows to perform automated, scalable, and intelligent code inspections, while still maintaining the critical role of human oversight.

Manual Code Review: Still Valuable, But Limited by Scale

Traditional manual code review has long been a critical phase of the software development lifecycle. Teams use code reviews to ensure correctness, maintain coding standards, catch bugs early, and foster knowledge sharing. But as projects scale and codebases grow in complexity, relying solely on manual review introduces significant limitations:

1. Time-Consuming and Inconsistent

Manual review often takes hours or even days. With team members juggling multiple responsibilities, pull requests can sit idle, delaying feedback and releases. Moreover, reviewers vary in experience and expertise, leading to inconsistent feedback and subjective assessments.

2. Prone to Human Error and Fatigue

Reviewing thousands of lines of code is mentally exhausting. Fatigue leads to overlooked bugs or failure to spot performance or security issues. Human reviewers can miss subtle errors that AI code review tools, trained on billions of tokens, are built to catch consistently.

3. Lack of Contextual Awareness

Developers new to a project or reviewing code from a different module often lack the full context. This can result in misinterpretation or inaccurate feedback. AI tools trained with large context windows can analyze code within broader architectural and logical contexts.

4. Bottlenecks in Delivery

Manual code review processes are frequently a bottleneck. Especially in CI/CD pipelines, slow feedback loops can reduce team agility, and minor improvements often get deprioritized due to bandwidth constraints.

Because of these drawbacks, developers are increasingly augmenting manual review with AI code review tools that provide faster, smarter, and more scalable alternatives.

GitHub Copilot: From Code Completion to Code Review

GitHub Copilot has become a staple for many developers thanks to its industry-leading AI code completion capabilities. But what’s less known is how Copilot is also evolving into a powerful AI code review assistant. By integrating directly into IDEs and GitHub’s pull request interface, Copilot is becoming a silent, intelligent reviewer.

Inline Suggestions While Coding

GitHub Copilot operates in real-time, providing line-by-line or function-level suggestions. It doesn’t just complete your code, it reviews it as you write, suggesting cleaner patterns, flagging anti-patterns, and simplifying logic blocks before they become technical debt.

Example: When a developer writes a nested loop or verbose condition, Copilot suggests a more optimized alternative, reducing runtime complexity. This is the earliest and most proactive form of AI code review.

Pull Request Summarization and Comments

In GitHub’s UI, Copilot can be configured to automatically summarize changes in pull requests. It detects logic changes, evaluates code against best practices, and suggests improvements or flags potential issues, including:

  • Redundant code

  • Inefficient algorithms

  • Reused logic that could be abstracted

  • Misused APIs or insecure patterns

This ability to explain code changes in plain English ensures even non-authors or reviewers unfamiliar with the module can quickly grasp what the PR entails.

Security and Performance Checks

GitHub Copilot can help identify vulnerabilities like hard-coded credentials, missing input validations, or insecure cryptographic implementations. It also spots performance issues, such as synchronous I/O in an async context, making it a full-spectrum AI code review companion.

Multi-Language Support and Scalability

Copilot supports languages like Python, JavaScript, Go, Rust, TypeScript, C#, and many more. This means developers working in polyglot environments can rely on consistent, high-quality code suggestions and reviews across the stack.

Beyond Copilot: AI Code Review Tools Developers Should Know

While Copilot leads the pack in adoption, other AI code review tools are carving out specialized niches, especially among advanced teams looking for tailored capabilities. Let’s break down what each one offers:

Cursor: The LLM-Native IDE with Built-in Code Reviewer

Cursor is a next-gen IDE powered by large language models. Beyond basic code completion, it offers:

  • Full-project codebase indexing for contextual understanding

  • Summary generation of code diffs for PRs

  • Suggestions on logic optimization and readability

  • Refactor proposals with commit-ready snippets

Cursor is ideal for developers looking to replace or enhance traditional editors like VS Code with AI-first workflows.

Bolt: High-Speed Code Review Agent for Full-Stack Projects

Bolt is designed for teams moving fast. Its AI code review engine is tuned for:

  • Continuous code analysis across backend, frontend, and infra

  • Real-time PR comments

  • Recommendations for improved error handling, input validation, and DB query optimization

Bolt pairs well with microservices teams where speed, scale, and coverage are critical.

Lovable: Developer-Friendly Code Review Companion

Lovable goes beyond review and acts as a mentor. It excels at:

  • Explaining code changes and suggesting best practices

  • Reviewing team-wide code for stylistic consistency

  • Highlighting technical debt or unnecessary complexity

Lovable is a strong tool for teams with mixed experience levels and focuses on improving long-term code maintainability.

GoCodeo: Collaborative AI-Powered Review Sessions

GoCodeo introduces live collaborative AI reviews with:

  • Side-by-side code comparisons

  • Visual AI explanations of logic branches and function chains

  • Auto-generated documentation from function headers

It transforms code review into an educational and collaborative experience.

Benefits of Using AI for Code Review Over Manual Methods
Speed and Efficiency

AI reviews your code in seconds. You no longer have to wait for teammates to finish meetings or finish their tasks before getting feedback.

Objective and Bias-Free

AI doesn't bring bias, hierarchy, or emotion into the process. It treats every piece of code equally, focusing purely on correctness and optimization.

Contextual Awareness

Thanks to massive context windows, tools like Copilot and Cursor evaluate your code within the broader scope of your repository. This is especially valuable for identifying regressions, duplicated logic, or opportunities to abstract shared functionality.

Continuous Improvement

By surfacing issues early and frequently, AI code review helps developers learn from every iteration. It’s like having a senior engineer quietly reviewing your code 24/7, without judgment or burnout.

Scaling Code Quality Across Teams

For large enterprises or open-source projects, ensuring consistency across hundreds of contributors is impossible manually. AI tools enforce patterns, suggest best practices, and maintain quality at scale.

AI Code Review + AI Code Completion = Developer Superpowers

The combination of AI code completion and AI code review leads to the most significant gains in productivity and software quality. When you write better code with Copilot or Cursor and then review it using tools like Bolt or GoCodeo, you create a feedback loop where:

  • Bugs are prevented before they’re committed

  • Reviews focus on logic and design, not syntax

  • Time-to-merge is reduced

  • Team velocity increases

These tools don’t replace the need for human developers, they empower them. Developers become more confident, faster, and more focused on solving real business problems instead of getting stuck in low-level bugs or style debates.

Final Thoughts: AI Code Review is the Future, and the Future is Now

AI code review isn’t a trend, it’s a fundamental shift. From GitHub Copilot’s proactive suggestions to Cursor’s deep diff analysis, from Bolt’s real-time feedback to Lovable’s mentoring insights, and GoCodeo’s collaborative sessions, the tools are here, mature, and ready for adoption.

If you’re a developer, engineering manager, or tech founder still relying solely on manual review, now is the time to upgrade your workflow. Embrace AI code review, integrate AI code completion, and unlock the productivity, consistency, and quality your team deserves.

Because the future isn’t waiting, and it’s written in code, reviewed by AI.