Contributor Alerts

ShipLens automatically detects patterns that may indicate issues requiring manager attention. Alerts are designed to be early warnings, not verdicts.

Alert Types

Silent Contributor

Trigger: No commits in the last 14 days.

$$\text{cutoff}=\text{now}-(14\times \mathrm{86,400}\text{ seconds})$$$$\text{alert if }\text{last\_commit\_at}<\text{cutoff}$$

Auto-resolution: The alert is automatically resolved when the contributor makes a new commit.

Common legitimate causes:

• Vacation or leave
• Working on non-code tasks (architecture, planning, reviews)
• Moved to a different repository not yet connected
• Pair programming (commits attributed to partner)

High Fix Ratio

Trigger: More than 50% of commits in the last 14 days are of type fix.

$$\text{fix\_ratio}=\frac{\text{fix commits}}{\text{total commits}}>0.5$$

Minimum commits: 5 (to avoid false positives on low-volume contributors)

What it might indicate:

• Fragile code in their area of responsibility
• Inadequate testing catching bugs pre-commit
• Unclear requirements leading to rework
• Or simply: they're assigned to a stabilization sprint (legitimate)

Low Test Discipline

Trigger: Less than 10% of commits in the last 14 days touch test files.

$$\text{test\_ratio}=\frac{\text{commits touching test files}}{\text{total commits}}<0.10$$

Minimum commits: 5

Test file detection: Files with paths containing test, spec, or __tests__.

What it might indicate:

• Tests written in separate commits (not co-located)
• Working in areas without existing test infrastructure
• Skipping tests under time pressure
• Or: their work is primarily configuration/infrastructure (no tests expected)

Alert Lifecycle

Every alert has:

Field	Description
alert_type	silent_contributor, high_fix_ratio, or low_test_discipline
message	Human-readable description of the alert
resolved_at	nil while unresolved; timestamp when resolved
contributor_id	The contributor this alert applies to

Background Jobs

Alerts are detected by two Oban background jobs:

Job	Alerts Detected
SilentContributorJob	Silent contributor
CommitPatternAlertJob	High fix ratio, low test discipline

These jobs run on a scheduled cadence and create alerts only when patterns are detected.

Where Alerts Appear

• Alerts page — Centralized view of all unresolved alerts across the company
• Contributor profile — Alerts specific to that contributor
• Weekly digests — Summarized in the risk signals section
• 1:1 reports — Referenced in topics to explore

TIP

Alerts are intentionally conservative — they require minimum commit thresholds to avoid noise. A contributor with 2 commits in a period (both fixes) won't trigger a high fix ratio alert because 2 commits is too small a sample.