GitHub

GitHub is critical for a variety of Cofactor features: it's how Cofactor reads your code to build sandboxes, how pull requests get tested from a comment, and how results land back in the review conversation.

01Connect

1. In Settings → GitHub, click Install GitHub App.
2. Pick the account or organization, and grant access to the repositories that build your applications.
3. Link repos to the application they belong to — in the app, or from the CLI:

cofactor property repo link --property <id> --repo owner/name

Multi-service apps: link every repo that ships together. A sandbox template can include all of them, so one environment holds the whole release.

02What the connection powers

Test a PR from a comment

Mention @cofactor on any pull request in a connected repository and Cofactor runs an ad-hoc test against a sandbox built from that PR's branch — unmerged code, disposable environment:

@cofactor make sure the new pricing banner shows for free-tier users

A bare @cofactor tests the behavior changed by the diff. Cofactor posts a status comment immediately and edits it in place: verdict, per-check results, verified issues with replay links, and a recording link that never expires. The full walkthrough is in Ad-hoc testing.

Build sandboxes from your repos

Sandbox templates are created from connected repositories — Cofactor clones the linked repo(s), builds the app, seeds it, and provisions disposable instances on demand. The repository link at the application level decides what's available at template-creation time. See Setting up a sandbox.

Webhooks and check runs

The App subscribes to pull-request webhooks, so PR-triggered work starts without polling, and posts check-run results on your commits where your branch protection can see them.

03Troubleshooting

04Related

• Ad-hoc testing — PR-comment testing in depth
• Setting up a sandbox — repo-built disposable environments
• Properties — how repo links attach to applications