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Welcome to Hephaestus

Process-Aware Mentoring for Agile Software Teams. Onboard faster and learn better habits with an AI mentor grounded in your repo workflow—covering issues, commits, pull requests, and team rituals. Hephaestus combines AI-guided reflection, transparent gamification, and actionable analytics so new contributors level up quickly while experienced reviewers stay engaged.

Hephaestus hero illustration

This guide is tailored for learners, mentors, and course staff who work inside the production environment at hephaestus.aet.cit.tum.de. You will find practical instructions for daily workflows as well as tips for getting the most value out of Hephaestus.

What Hephaestus offers​

Code review gamification​

  • Weekly leaderboard with real-time updates across the repositories you monitor.
  • Team competitions and leagues that reward consistent, high-quality review activity.
  • Automated recognition via Slack digests, spotlighting top reviewers and notable pull requests each week.

AI mentor (Heph)​

  • Guided conversations that align with agile rituals like retrospectives, standups, and review reflections.
  • Direct integration with your GitHub activity so the mentor can surface relevant pull requests and action items.
  • Auto-generated artifacts you can share with your team or pin to your dashboard for follow-up.

Workspace management​

  • Flexible repository and team configuration governed at the workspace level.
  • Fine-grained access controls to keep data scoped to the cohorts and mentors who need it.
  • Built-in privacy guardrails so learners control what information is shared beyond their teams.

Who should use this guide?​

  • Students and engineers contributing code reviews in a Hephaestus-enabled course or project.
  • Teaching assistants and mentors who facilitate sprint rituals and monitor learner progress.
  • Researchers evaluating review activity, mentoring engagement, or gamification outcomes.
Stay on track

This section is exclusively for end-user workflows. For deployment, architecture, or contribution guidance, jump to the Contributor Guide or Admin Guide instead.

Quick start​

  1. Sign in with your GitHub account at hephaestus.aet.cit.tum.de.
  2. Join your course or team workspace and connect the repositories you actively review.
  3. Open the Mentor tab to set your goals, then track progress on the Leaderboard each week.

Continue with Getting started for a hands-on walkthrough of the onboarding journey.