buddy vs sourcery

Refactoring roots, different scope

Sourcery started as a refactoring assistant — code quality suggestions in the editor — and grew into pull request review. That heritage shows in what it is good at, and in the shape of what it leaves to other tools.

AI code review Finishing touches All comparisons

buddy's take on tidying

$ buddy touch 128 --name simplify

             __
    (\,------'()'--o    simplify, as a suggestion
     (_    ___    /~"   not a commit
      (_)_)  (_)_)

  → duplicated retry logic in worker.ts
    and queue.ts could share one helper
  → the nested ternary at parse.ts:60
    reads as three conditions
  ✗ left alone: the early return in
    auth.ts would change behaviour for
    an empty token

  posted as a suggestion. no branch opened.
  simplification is taste, and taste is
  not a bot's call to commit.

🎯

Findings are failures, not preferences

Buddy's review reports what a change breaks — a dropped error that turns an expired session into a valid login, a retry counter that never terminates. Style and simplification live in the simplify finishing touch, which posts a suggestion rather than committing to your branch.

🚦

Merge gates

Title format, description sections, linked issue, dependency policy and your own English assertions, published as a check run branch protection can require.

📦

Dependencies included

Grouped updates, real changelogs, OSV advisories, a pinned dashboard and auto-merge across eleven ecosystems.

🛡️

Workflow supply-chain audit

bash injection, excessive permissions, unpinned actions, self-hosted exposure — the CI footguns a code reviewer does not look at.

🦴

No key required for the floor

Secret scanning and the analyzers run offline. Useful in a pre-commit hook, and free on every repository.

🏠

Your CI, your model

No hosted app on your repository. The diff goes to the provider you chose, or nowhere.

Side by side

	Buddy	Sourcery
AI pull request review	✅	✅
Refactoring suggestions	Via the `simplify` touch	✅ core strength
IDE integration	—	✅
Dependency updates	✅	—
Security advisories, licence policy	✅	—
Workflow supply-chain audit	✅	—
Merge gates as check runs	✅	—
CI repair	✅	—
Local pre-push review	✅ CLI	✅ IDE
Works with no API key	✅ analyzers	—
Runs entirely in your CI	✅	Hosted
Bring your own model	✅	—
Open source	✅ MIT	—

Product capabilities change; check Sourcery's own documentation before deciding on any single row.

Where Sourcery is the better choice

You want refactoring suggestions while you type. Sourcery's editor integration is the thing it has been building longest, and Buddy has no IDE plugin at all — its local story is a CLI you run.
Python-first teams who value the depth Sourcery built up there.
You want a hosted product with a dashboard and support rather than a binary and a config file.

Where Buddy is different

Scope. Review is one of several jobs: merge gates, CI repair, the workflow audit and the whole dependency half sit alongside it.
Taste is delivered as a suggestion. Simplification is posted for you to accept, not committed to your branch — because "cleaner" is an opinion and opinions do not belong in an automated commit.
It runs where your code already is. No app installed, no diff leaving your pipeline, no per-developer licence.
A free floor everywhere. --light gives every repository secret scanning and a workflow audit for nothing.

AI code review · Finishing touches · Local review · All comparisons