How CodeRabbit helped Plane get their release schedule back on track

Overview

Plane, an open-core project management solution, had an ambitious roadmap and a tight-knit team determined to move fast. Despite the frontend team’s small size—just 12 engineers—they were responsible for significant scope: building and maintaining their cloud, self-hosted, and popular open source versions, fixing bugs, deploying new features, and continuously improving Plane’s performance and security.

As the most popular open source project management tool, they also needed to review multiple, complex pull requests a day – including those from their many OSS contributors. That proved to be a blocker for the team. “Long review cycles slowed us down,” explained Principal Engineer Sriram Veeraghanta. “Without clear PR summaries, understanding changes took time, delaying merges and feature releases. Bugs and inconsistencies slipped through, adding to tech debt.”

Eager to free up developer time and get their release schedule back on track, Sriram decided to try CodeRabbit, an AI-powered code review platform recommended to him by one of Plane’s OSS contributors. The result? Drastic improvements in review speed, code quality, and developer satisfaction. For Plane, that translated into less time spent buried in pull requests and more time hitting milestones that actually matter.

The challenge: A manual code review bottleneck

Before CodeRabbit, Plane relied on what Sriram characterized as the ‘standard process’ of manual reviews using code editors and GitHub’s built-in tools. “It worked,” he shared, “but was time-consuming and required a lot of back-and-forth to fully understand changes.”

That manual code review process just couldn’t keep up with the speed of Plane’s development cycle.

• High pull request volume
  As an application-layer SaaS company building flexible open-core project management software, Plane’s roadmap involved building a wide range of vertical features. That – plus the typical volume of spam and fluff PRs an OSS tool receives –- translated into a steady stream of PRs. For Plane’s senior engineers, that made for an overwhelming daily workload of scanning line after line during manual code reviews. With research showing quality degradation in manual code reviews after 1 to 2 hours a day or reviewing ~400 lines, Sriram’s team struggled to keep up.

• Limited context in PRs
  Many developers wrote only brief or no descriptions for their PRs, forcing reviewers to piece together a puzzle. “It was hard to grasp the context,” recalled Sriram. “I had to manually go through files to understand the changes.”

• Slowed delivery and hidden bugs
  Manual code reviews caused merges and releases to slow down – interfering with Plane’s product roadmap. While basic static checks or linting tools caught some issues, many bugs, vulnerabilities, and large-scale refactoring complications often slipped through as each PR demanded significant engineering attention.

• Trapped in a cycle of low developer productivity
  With developers spending so much time on manual code reviews, they had less time to concentrate on writing code. That didn’t just impact velocity but also impacted code quality – which then meant that future code reviews would take even longer. That led to what felt like endless review cycles for Plane’s senior engineers.

Why Plane loves CodeRabbit

Instant AI Summaries & Sequence Diagrams

For Plane, CodeRabbit’s AI-generated summaries and the Sequence Diagrams were an immediate time-saver.
“With CodeRabbit, AI-generated summaries give me instant context and the visual file structure helps me spot critical changes quickly,” Sriram explained. “These made it much easier to review changes quickly and catch critical issues without going through every file manually.”
That alone shaved hours off their daily reviews.

Early issue detection

Like with most small teams, Plane has to balance rapid iteration with stability and scalability – something that is harder to do if you’re always responding to issues in production or when the codebase has significant tech debt. AI code reviews helped considerably:

“Automated reviews catch issues early, improving both speed and code quality,” shared Sriram.

With CodeRabbit, issues they might have missed before—including security vulnerabilities, logic errors, or concurrency pitfalls—were flagged right away*.* This proactive approach reduced the chance of shipping bugs into production.

Faster, more efficient workflows

Plane’s workflow improved dramatically because CodeRabbit goes beyond traditional static analysis by understanding context behind code changes and leveraging the advanced reasoning of generative A

“AI changed the game by accelerating reviews, providing better context, and catching issues early, making the entire workflow more efficient,” Sriram shared.

Set up in minutes

Implementing CodeRabbit was a breeze for Plane, which meant the team was able to start seeing value right away.

“The setup was seamless—we configured CodeRabbit in just a few minutes, and the bot started reviewing our PRs instantly,” Sriram explained*. “It fit right into our workflow without any friction.”

The results: Quality code, shipped faster

Once CodeRabbit was fully in place, Plane saw quick improvements to their process:

Significantly decreased code review time

“PR review time has significantly decreased, improving deployment speed,” shared Sriram. Code reviews that used to take hours were now completed in a fraction of the time. CodeRabbit customers generally see a 50% reduction in overall review time.

Fewer bugs reaching production

By catching issues at the PR stage, the Plane team saw notable reductions in post-release fixes*. “Fewer bugs make it into production thanks to early issue detection,”* explained Sriram. Across our customers, CodeRabbit catches an average of 90%+ of all bugs and errors.

Faster merge cycles

With better context and fewer open questions, the team were able to merge PRs faster – and not fall behind on their release schedule. “We now spend less time on back-and-forth and more time shipping quality code,” explained Sriram. While results vary from team to team, CodeRabbit customers see an average of 4x faster PR merges.

Improved developer productivity

Less back-and-forth in PR discussions and less time on manual code reviews has allowed engineers to focus on building rather than reviewing. For that reason, Sriram believes CodeRabbit is essential for any development team. After all, “developer productivity is crucial for any organization,” he shared.

Immediate impact

Plane started seeing value almost immediately—with faster reviews, better PR context, and improved collaboration. “CodeRabbit has sped up reviews, improved visibility, and helped catch issues early,” Sriram shared.

CodeRabbit = No more code review bottlenecks

By implementing CodeRabbit, Plane successfully tackled the code review bottleneck that had slowed their team’s momentum. They’re now shipping features faster, collaborating more effectively as a team, and maintaining a high standard of code quality.

As Sriram puts it:

“Code reviews are no longer a bottleneck. AI-driven insights help us catch issues early, and the team can focus more on writing better code rather than spending excessive time reviewing. The overall workflow is smoother and we ship faster with more confidence.”

Want see how CodeRabbit can help your team? Get a 14-day trial.