nitpik

nitpik

Free for personal and open-source use. No license key needed — just install and go.

AI-powered code reviews for your team. Bring your own model, bring your own API key. One flat platform fee — no per-seat charges, no usage caps.

Website · Documentation · Security Model · Get a License · nitpik help

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Why nitpik?

• Bring your own model — use Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Cohere, DeepSeek, xAI, Groq, Perplexity, or any OpenAI-compatible API. Your keys, your infrastructure, your data.
• Flat platform fee — one price for your whole team. No per-seat licensing, no usage-based billing, no surprises.
• Free for personal & OSS — use nitpik on personal projects and open-source repos at no cost, forever. No license key required.
• Single binary + Docker image — drop it into any CI pipeline in minutes.
• Configurable reviewer agents — built-in profiles or custom Markdown-defined reviewers with your team's conventions.
• Agentic mode — let the LLM explore your codebase with built-in and custom tools.
• Secret scanning — 200+ rules detect and redact secrets before code reaches the LLM.
• Threat scanning — 44 rules plus structural heuristics detect obfuscated payloads, backdoors, supply chain attacks, invisible Unicode tricks, and homoglyph identifiers.
• Every major CI platform — GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Bitbucket Pipelines, Woodpecker/Forgejo/Gitea.

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Getting Started

1. Install

Install script (recommended)

curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nsrosenqvist/nitpik/main/install.sh | bash

This detects your platform, downloads the latest release, verifies the checksum, and installs the binary to /usr/local/bin. Pass options to customize:

# Install to a custom directory
curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nsrosenqvist/nitpik/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --dir ~/.local/bin

# Install a specific version
curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nsrosenqvist/nitpik/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --version v0.3.0

Homebrew (macOS and Linux)

brew tap nsrosenqvist/nitpik
brew install nitpik

Or build from source:

cargo install --path .

Once installed, update to the latest release at any time:

nitpik update

Docker

docker pull ghcr.io/nsrosenqvist/nitpik:latest

2. Activate Your License (commercial use only)

For commercial use, activate your license key:

nitpik license activate <YOUR_LICENSE_KEY>
nitpik license status   # verify activation

The key is stored in ~/.config/nitpik/config.toml. You can also set the NITPIK_LICENSE_KEY environment variable in CI.

Personal and open-source projects do not need a license key.

3. Connect an LLM Provider

nitpik is bring-your-own-model. Set two environment variables — a provider name and the corresponding API key:

export NITPIK_PROVIDER=anthropic        # or openai, gemini, cohere, deepseek, xai, groq, mistral, ollama, and more
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-...         # provider-specific key

Or use NITPIK_API_KEY as a universal fallback. To use a custom or self-hosted endpoint (any OpenAI-compatible API), also set NITPIK_BASE_URL.

4. Run Your First Review

nitpik review --diff-base main

That's it. nitpik diffs your current branch against main, picks a reviewer profile, scans for secrets, and prints findings to your terminal:

nitpik · Free for personal & open-source use. Commercial use requires a license.

✔ w/handler.rs done

 ✖ error in handler.rs:21
   Backend crashes due to unhandled file I/O and parsing errors — The
   `load_users` function uses `unwrap()` for file reading and parsing,
   and accesses array elements without bounds checking.
   → Implement robust error handling (e.g., using `Result` and propagating
     errors) instead of `unwrap()`. Add bounds checking for array access.

 ⚠ warning in handler.rs:36
   N+1 query in `get_users_by_ids` — Calling `get_user` in a loop for
   each ID results in an N+1 query pattern, leading to significant
   performance degradation for large ID lists.
   → Consider implementing a batch fetch mechanism that retrieves all
     users in a single operation.

───────────────────────────────────
 2 findings: 1 errors, 1 warnings, 0 infos

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Core Concepts

Diff Inputs

nitpik needs a diff to review. Pick whichever suits your workflow:

nitpik review --diff-base main              # git diff against a branch/commit
nitpik review --scan src/main.rs            # review a file directly (no git)
nitpik review --diff-file changes.patch     # pre-computed unified diff
git diff main | nitpik review --diff-stdin  # piped from another tool

Reviewer Lenses