kinora

GitHub PR comments

Post a summary comment on the pull request straight from CI, using the job's own GITHUB_TOKEN.

On a pull_request run, kinora can post (and keep updating) a summary comment on the PR: pass/fail counts, tests newly failing versus the base branch, and a link to the run. It uses the CI job’s ambient GITHUB_TOKEN, so no credentials are stored in kinora. It works the same on cloud and self-host.

Both upload paths support it: the reporter and the CLI.

Reporter

reporter: [['@kinora/reporter', { project: { slug: 'web-app' }, prComment: true }]]

CLI

npx @kinora/cli upload results.json --project web-app --pr-comment

Required workflow permission

The comment is posted with the job’s GITHUB_TOKEN, which must be granted write access to PRs:

# in your workflow job:
permissions:
  pull-requests: write # required for the PR comment
steps:
  - run: npx playwright test
    env:
      KINORA_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.KINORA_TOKEN }}

Regression vs the base branch

The comment lists tests newly failing versus the PR’s base branch. This needs the base branch name, which auto-detects from GITHUB_BASE_REF on a pull_request run (or set it explicitly: reporter git.baseBranch, CLI --git-base-branch). kinora compares the PR run’s tests against the latest run on the base branch to compute what regressed.

Edge cases

  • Fork PRs are skipped. GITHUB_TOKEN is read-only on pull requests from forks, so the comment can’t be posted there and is silently skipped.
  • Sharded runs: shard with merge-reports (blob report) so one merged run posts one comment. Per-shard runs are skipped.
  • Matrix builds sharing a PR: give each leg its own label so they keep separate comments - reporter prComment: { label: 'node20' }, CLI --pr-label node20.
  • Green runs: policy: 'on-failure' (reporter) / --pr-policy on-failure (CLI) skips the comment when the run passes. The default posts always.

How the comment stays single

kinora tags its comment with a hidden marker keyed by project (and label, if set), finds its own previous comment on the PR, and edits it in place. Re-running the job updates the same comment rather than adding a new one.