Review

Graphite: stacked PRs with a real opinion about how code review should work

Graphite is strongest for GitHub-native teams that want stacked pull requests, merge ordering, and AI review in one workflow.

Last updated April 2026 · Pricing and features verified against official documentation

Code review gets harder at exactly the moment AI makes code generation cheaper. The old bottleneck was writing enough code to matter; the new bottleneck is deciding what deserves attention, what can move in parallel, and what should wait. Graphite is one of the few products that responds to that reality instead of pretending a chat box in the PR sidebar is enough.

That is because Graphite has always been more opinionated than most developer tools. It started with stacked changes on top of GitHub, then expanded into a PR inbox, merge queue, AI review, and now Graphite Agent, the renamed bundle that replaced Diamond and Chat in October 2025. In December 2025, the company also said it had signed a definitive agreement to join Cursor while continuing to operate Graphite as an independent product. The result is a tool that now reads less like a single reviewer and more like the review and merge layer of a broader developer toolchain.

For GitHub-centric teams that live in large diffs, Graphite is excellent. It makes complicated work easier to break apart, easier to review, and easier to land without turning every merge into a coordination exercise. The stack-aware workflow is not a gimmick; it is the product’s core argument, and it is a good one.

For everyone else, the fit is narrower. If you want a general coding assistant, a multi-VCS review layer, or a lightweight AI helper that does not ask you to adopt Graphite’s workflow, this is probably too much system for too little gain. Graphite is a serious piece of review infrastructure, and it expects to be treated that way.

What the Product Actually Is Now

Graphite is now a GitHub-centered review platform built around stacked PRs, a modern PR page, a unified inbox, merge queue handling, and Graphite Agent for AI-assisted review and chat. The current product surface includes the web app, CLI, VS Code extension, GitHub App, Slack notifications, and MCP support, which makes it more than a single feature and less than a broad developer platform.

The more important shift is conceptual. After the October 2025 renaming of Diamond and Chat to Graphite Agent, the product stopped presenting AI as a sidecar and started presenting it as part of the review flow itself. That matters because Graphite is not trying to replace GitHub; it is trying to reshape what happens around GitHub after a change is written.

Strengths

Stacked PRs solve the part of review most tools ignore. Graphite’s best idea is still the original one: break large changes into smaller dependent PRs so authors stay unblocked while reviewers see smaller diffs. That sounds mundane until you work in a repo where every medium-sized change turns into a week-long review thread. In that setting, Graphite’s opinionated stack model is a genuine productivity gain, not a style preference.

The review experience stays inside the PR instead of scattering context. Graphite Agent and Chat let reviewers ask about a diff, inspect linked history, get suggested fixes, and apply changes without bouncing between tools. That keeps the review loop tight, which is especially useful when the real problem is context switching rather than model quality. The product is at its best when it acts like a controlled conversation around a specific change, not a general-purpose assistant.

The merge queue is part of the product, not an afterthought. Graphite’s stack-aware queue is one of the reasons the product feels more operational than most AI review tools. It does not just comment on code; it helps determine the order in which code lands and keeps the path to merge cleaner than a pile of ad hoc approvals would. For teams that care about throughput as much as correctness, that is a meaningful distinction.

The team workflow is coherent enough to be adopted as a system. The combination of GitHub App integration, Slack notifications, CLI commands, VS Code support, and MCP means Graphite can show up where engineers already work. That is important because tools like this fail when they ask for a new ritual without paying rent in the existing one. Graphite pays rent.

Weaknesses

GitHub lock-in is real. Graphite is centered on GitHub in a way that shapes everything from permissions to workflow design. That is fine if your company is already standardized on GitHub, but it sharply limits the product’s appeal for teams on GitLab or other hosts. A product this opinionated needs a matching environment; otherwise, it feels like an extra process layer you have to defend.

Annual billing makes the commercial model feel more serious than the free tier suggests. Hobby is free, but it is restricted to personal repos and limited AI usage. Starter is $20 per user per month billed annually, and Team is $40 per user per month billed annually. That is not outrageous for review infrastructure, but it does mean Graphite wants a real commitment before it becomes the product’s full self.

The AI layer is powerful, but still bounded by review work. Graphite Agent is useful when the job is understanding, critiquing, and iterating on a pull request. It is not trying to be a broad coding environment or an editor-first assistant. Developers who mainly want a place to generate code, refactor files, and move quickly inside an IDE will get more from GitHub Copilot or CodeRabbit if review automation is the bigger need.

Pricing

Graphite’s pricing is easiest to understand as a progression from evaluation to operational dependence. The Hobby plan is free and useful mainly for personal repos and a limited taste of Graphite Agent. Starter at $20 per user per month, billed annually, is the first paid tier that makes sense for small teams who want stacking plus limited AI interactions without committing to the full workflow.

Team at $40 per user per month, also billed annually, is the tier that actually matches the product’s promise. It unlocks unlimited AI reviews and chat, merge queue, automations, and the full team workflow. In practice, that means the cheaper tier is mostly a bridge and the expensive tier is the one that buys the complete system.

Enterprise is custom and adds the usual controls that larger buyers expect: SAML, ACLs, audit logs, GHES support, custom analytics, private uploads, and premium support. The pricing structure is telling. Graphite is not trying to be the cheapest way to add AI comments to a pull request; it is trying to be the place where review, merge ordering, and automation are managed together.

Privacy

Graphite’s privacy posture is better than the category average, but it is not invisible. The company says its AI features are opt-in, do not store or train on your data, and do not include your data in requests to Anthropic or OpenAI unless you explicitly approve a feature that needs it. It also says neither Graphite nor its subprocessors use your data to train models, and organizations can ask support to block AI features entirely.

That said, Graphite still stores GitHub access tokens, basic profile metadata, session state, logs, and some usage metadata. The docs also say the AI features may send pull request metadata, the changed code, and related PR context to subprocessors when you invoke them. So the privacy story is not “nothing leaves the system”; it is “Graphite is explicit about when data leaves the system and gives teams a way to shut the AI path off.”

The security side is solid enough for serious buyers. Graphite says it is SOC 2 Type II compliant, encrypts tokens in transit and at rest, and continuously pen tests. For most engineering teams, the bigger question is not whether Graphite has a privacy policy; it is whether they are comfortable with a review tool that can inspect enough code context to be useful while still being transparent about where that context goes.

Who It’s Best For

The GitHub-native team with too much PR volume. If your engineers already use GitHub, Slack, and a CLI-heavy workflow, Graphite can reduce review drag without forcing a platform migration. It is strongest when large diffs, slow approvals, and merge order are the recurring pain points.

The platform team trying to standardize review behavior. Graphite gives one place to define how stacks, reviews, and merges behave, which is useful when you want less variation across repos and fewer review rituals that depend on whoever happens to be online. The product is good at turning review into a system.

The team that wants AI review without a separate AI review product. Graphite Agent is compelling when the goal is to keep the code review loop tight instead of sprinkling AI comments across multiple tools. If you want the reviewer, the conversation, and the merge path in one place, Graphite has a stronger claim than a generic coding assistant.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

Teams that are not standardized on GitHub should look elsewhere first. Graphite’s workflow is too GitHub-shaped to be a neutral fit, and GitLab Duo will make more sense if your code already lives in GitLab.

Teams that mainly want automated review comments should compare it with Greptile and CodeRabbit. Graphite is more ambitious, but that ambition comes with a workflow opinion that some teams will not want.

Developers who mostly want an editor assistant should start with GitHub Copilot. Copilot is the better choice when the primary problem is writing code faster, not turning pull request review into a managed process.

Bottom Line

Graphite is one of the clearest examples of a product that knows exactly what problem it is solving. It is not trying to be a general AI companion or a broad developer sandbox. It is trying to make review, stacking, and merge ordering work better for GitHub-native teams that already feel the pain of big diffs and too many moving parts.

That makes it unusually coherent, but also unusually specific. If your team wants review infrastructure, Graphite is serious, opinionated, and worth evaluating. If you want a looser assistant or a tool that does not ask you to adopt its workflow, Graphite will feel like more machinery than relief.