Glossary

ADO Pilot uses specialized terminology across configuration, billing, and integration. Every term defined here has an explicit anchor (#kebab-case) so other pages can deep-link to a single definition.

Terms are listed alphabetically. Each entry is one to three sentences; follow the cross-links for full treatment.

A

Auto-overage

The overage policy that lets reviews continue after included review credits are exhausted by billing the excess at the tier's overage rate. Contrasts with hard-block; see Overage behavior.

B

Billing period

A recurring monthly interval anchored to your Stripe subscription start date. Review credit consumption resets at the period boundary; unused RCs do not carry over. See Review credits explained.

Blocker

The highest severity level for a finding — an issue the reviewer believes must be fixed before merge. One or more blockers force a FAIL verdict.

D

Delegated OAuth

A previously-planned authentication method where users sign in with their Microsoft / Entra ID credentials and ADO Pilot acts on their behalf. This flow was removed before general availability. The current supported auth methods are the PAT and the service principal (available on Business plan and above).

F

File exclusion patterns

Glob patterns (org / project / repo, additive merge) that exclude files from review and from review credit billing. Defaults cover binary formats (images, archives, fonts, and similar), files ending in .lock, and .map source maps. See File exclusions.

Finding

A specific code issue identified by an AI review. Each finding has a severity, a category (security, bug, performance, error-handling, maintainability, testing), and an optional code suggestion. Only second-pass–confirmed findings are posted as inline comments.

First pass

The initial broad-scan review phase, tuned for high recall — it may over-report. Typically 30–50% of first-pass candidates are dropped by the second pass before any findings reach the PR.

H

Hard-block

An overage policy where, once included review credits are exhausted, new reviews are rejected and no RC is consumed. It is not a default on the standard tiers — Starter, Team, and Business all default to auto-overage; hard-block applies to Enterprise or custom contracts with a negotiated hard cap, or when an overage cap of zero is set. See Overage behavior.

I

Iteration

An Azure DevOps concept representing a single push to a pull request's source branch. Iterations are numbered sequentially (1, 2, 3, …) and are the unit of change ADO Pilot reviews.

O

Org

Short for organization — an Azure DevOps cloud organization. Internally identified by orgId (the ADO organization GUID). One org maps to one ADO Pilot tenant.

Overage cap

An optional per-tenant ceiling on auto-overage spending. Once overage RCs consumed reach the cap, reviews hard-block even on auto-overage tiers. Configured on the Billing page.

Overage rate

The per-RC price for reviews beyond a tier's included allocation, applied while the subscription is in auto-overage mode. See Pricing.

P

Personal access token (PAT)

A long-lived credential issued by Azure DevOps. ADO Pilot requires three scopes: Code (read), Code (status), and Pull Request Threads (read & write). Required scopes are enforced during onboarding — see Creating a PAT.

R

Rescission

A second-pass action that drops a first-pass finding from the final review because it is a false positive or low-value. Rescinded findings are never posted to the PR.

Review credit (RC)

The billing unit for AI reviews. One RC corresponds to roughly 500 billing diff lines, with a one-RC minimum per review. Consumption is metered monthly and unused RCs do not roll over. See Review credits explained.

S

Second pass

The refinement phase. The second pass re-evaluates first-pass candidates, confirms true issues, rescinds false positives, and writes the user-facing comment text. Only second-pass–confirmed findings are posted to your PR.

Service hook

The Azure DevOps mechanism that fires HTTP webhooks when a subscribed event occurs (for ADO Pilot, git.pullrequest.created and git.pullrequest.updated). Two hooks are registered per project at install time; each call carries the tenant's webhook credential for authentication.

Service principal

An Entra ID app identity. Customers grant admin consent to ADO Pilot's multi-tenant app registration, which creates a service principal in their tenant and lets the backend mint short-lived (≈1 h) tokens without storing customer secrets. Available on Business plan and above — see Setting up Service Principal auth.

Severity

The importance of a finding — blocker (must fix), warning (strongly suggested), or suggestion (nice-to-have). Severities roll up into the final verdict. See Severities and categories.

Status check

A PR status indicator posted by ADO Pilot with genre: adopilot and name: ai-pr-review. It can be wired up as a required branch policy in Azure DevOps. See Status check reference.

T

Target branch filters

Glob patterns (org / project / repo, additive merge) specifying which target branches trigger reviews — for example main, release/*, or * for all branches. Matching happens after the refs/heads/ prefix is stripped.

Tenant

One ADO Pilot customer, mapped one-to-one with an Azure DevOps organization. Each tenant has isolated data, settings, and billing.

Trial

The initial free allocation: 20 review credits granted to every new signup. Trial RCs are consumed before paid-plan RCs; once exhausted with no payment method on file, reviews hard-block.

V

Verdict

The final outcome of a review — PASS (no blockers or warnings), ADVISORY (warnings, no blockers), or FAIL (one or more blockers). Determines the status check state and, when configured as a required branch policy, gates PR completion.

W

Webhook credential

A per-tenant credential ADO Pilot issues at onboarding, via our API gateway's native subscription-key mechanism, and stores as a confidential input on the Azure DevOps service hook subscription. Unlike a shared secret, it has no fixed expiry and nothing to rotate on a schedule — if you cancel your plan, ADO Pilot revokes it immediately at the gateway. Validated at our webhook gateway before the event is forwarded to the backend.