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Connect GitHub

Connecting GitHub is optional. Without it, Bobbin still investigates using logs, metrics, error groups and Cloud Run revisions — it simply cannot answer “what changed?” by naming the commit behind a deploy. Skipping this step is a first-class choice, not a failure state; the console says so quietly on Home rather than blocking anything.

From the console, choose Connect GitHub. You will land on GitHub’s own app-installation screen, where you choose which repositories to install Bobbin on — GitHub calls this per-repository consent, and it is the actual authorisation boundary: Bobbin only ever reads a repository you explicitly selected at install time.

GitHub’s own installation screen shows a generic warning about the app being able to “act on your behalf” even for a read-only app — that wording is GitHub’s boilerplate and not something Bobbin can edit or narrow. What Bobbin’s GitHub App actually requests is two read-only permissions: Contents and Metadata, both read-only. No write permission is requested, and none is used.

  • Commit metadata — author, message, timestamp, the commits around a deploy.
  • File diffs for one commit — the “what changed” evidence a deploy-shaped incident needs.
  • The contents of one file at a given ref, when chasing a stack-trace location.

Every piece of content read from GitHub is capped before it reaches Bobbin’s reasoning: file diffs and file reads are hard-capped in size (4,000 characters, with a per-file patch limit on top), and the repository named in any call is validated against the installation’s own repository list — the list you chose at install time. Content read from GitHub is treated as untrusted input in the same way log lines are, and the same redaction pass applies before anything is persisted.

Bobbin never installs on an organisation-wide “all repositories” basis by default and never requests write access. Issues, pull request discussion, GitHub Actions runs and package contents are not read — only commit metadata, diffs and file contents on the repositories you selected.

Disconnecting from the console uninstalls Bobbin’s GitHub App first, then clears the stored installation record — revoking access at the source, rather than only deleting our record of it, so nothing is left that could still read your repositories after you have disconnected.