Data Quality Code Review

Elementary posts a structured data quality comment on every pull request that touches your dbt models, giving reviewers live context on test history, incidents, downstream impact, and merge risk — without leaving the PR. Findings that point at a specific line are also posted as review comments on the changed lines themselves, so reviewers see each issue in the diff where it originates.

Elementary data quality review comment on a pull request

What the review includes

Change analysis: flags NULL risks, type mismatches, and join changes that could alter row counts
Performance & cost: SQL anti-pattern detection (SELECT *, cross joins, missing filters on large tables) with volume context
Downstream blast radius: which models, pipelines, and dashboards depend on what’s changing, including column-level impact for renamed or removed columns
Tests & incidents: pass/fail history for each changed model, active data quality incidents, and coverage gaps on new columns
Risk summary: a plain-language assessment of whether it’s safe to merge, with prioritized recommendations

The comment is concise when everything looks clean. It expands only when there are actual issues to flag, and updates automatically on every new push.

Where findings appear

Surface	What it contains
Summary comment	The full review: change analysis, performance and cost, blast radius, tests and incidents, and the risk summary. Updated in place on every push, so a PR never collects duplicate review comments.
Inline review comments	Individual findings anchored to the changed line they refer to. Replaced on every re-run, so findings you have already fixed disappear. Anything that cannot be anchored to a line in the diff stays in the summary comment.

Elementary posts inline comments itself, through your connected GitHub integration, so they need no extra token or workflow permission. Inline comments are available on GitHub pull requests.

How it works

When a PR is opened or updated:

A CI job sends the repository name and branch to Elementary’s API
Elementary fetches the diff, runs static SQL analysis, and queries live data quality context for the changed models
A structured Markdown summary comment is posted on the PR or MR
On GitHub, findings that map to a changed line are also posted as inline review comments

Upgrading from v1

Inline review comments are what v2 adds: v1 posts the summary comment only. On GitHub, upgrading takes three edits to your workflow file.

Bump the action to v2

Change elementary-data/elementary-ci@v1 to elementary-data/elementary-ci@v2. Inline comments are on by default from there, so no new input is required.

Remove the checkout step

Delete the actions/checkout step. v2 does not read the repository from the runner, since Elementary fetches the diff server side.

Trim the permissions block

contents: read is no longer needed. Keep pull-requests: write and issues: write for the summary comment.

Your API key, secrets, and environment ID stay as they are. GitLab needs no change: it remains on v1.

Setup

Prerequisites

An Elementary Cloud account with a code repository connected
An Elementary API key

GitHub Actions

Add the workflow file

Create .github/workflows/elementary-review.yml in your dbt repository:

name: Elementary Data Quality Review

on:
  pull_request:
    paths:
      - "models/**/*.sql"
      - "models/**/*.yml"
      - "dbt_project.yml"

jobs:
  elementary-review:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      pull-requests: write
      issues: write
    steps:
      - uses: elementary-data/elementary-ci@v2
        with:
          elementary-api-key: ${{ secrets.ELEMENTARY_API_KEY }}

No actions/checkout step is needed. Elementary fetches the diff server side through your connected repository integration.

Add a repository secret

Go to Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions in your GitHub repository and add:

Secret	Required	Description
`elementary_api_key`	Yes	Your Elementary Cloud API key
`elementary_env_id`	No	Your Elementary environment ID. Only needed when the repository is connected to multiple environments.

The review only runs on PRs that touch model files. Other PRs are ignored.

This works for pull requests opened from branches within the same repository. GitHub does not pass repository secrets to pull_request workflows triggered by forks or Dependabot.

Action inputs

Input	Default	Description
`elementary-api-key`	required	Your Elementary Cloud API key
`elementary-env-id`	none	Elementary environment ID. Only needed when the repository is connected to more than one environment
`post-inline-comments`	`true`	Post findings as review comments on the changed lines they refer to, in addition to the summary comment. Set to `false` for the summary comment only
`elementary-api-url`	`https://prod.api.elementary-data.com`	Elementary API base URL. Override only if Elementary asks you to

Optional: specify environment

If your repository is connected to multiple Elementary environments, add env-id to specify which one to use:

- uses: elementary-data/elementary-ci@v2
  with:
    elementary-api-key: ${{ secrets.ELEMENTARY_API_KEY }}
    elementary-env-id: "169e9308-9a70-4200-b810-ad486cb42f3a"

The environment ID is the UUID in your Elementary Cloud URL. For example, in https://app.elementary-data.com/169e9308-9a70-4200-b810-ad486cb42f3a/report/dashboard, the environment ID is 169e9308-9a70-4200-b810-ad486cb42f3a.If you don’t specify an env-id and the repository is connected to only one environment, it will be selected automatically. If connected to multiple, the review will return an error listing the available environment IDs.

GitLab CI

Add the include to your .gitlab-ci.yml

include:
  - remote: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elementary-data/elementary-ci/v1/templates/mr-review.yml'

The job runs on merge request pipelines only, and is allow_failure: true, so a failed review never blocks your pipeline.

GitLab stays on v1. Merge requests get the summary comment, without the inline review comments described above.

Add CI/CD variables

Go to Settings > CI/CD > Variables and add:

Variable	Masked	Required	Description
`elementary_api_key`	Yes	Yes	Your Elementary Cloud API key
`elementary_env_id`	Yes	No	Your Elementary environment ID. Only needed when the repository is connected to multiple environments.
`gitlab_api_token`	Yes	No	Project Access Token with `api` scope. Only needed if you cannot enable CI/CD job token access (see below).

To post the MR comment, the template uses one of two authentication methods:

CI_JOB_TOKEN (default): GitLab’s built-in job token, available automatically in every pipeline. Requires a project admin to enable Settings > CI/CD > Token Access > Allow CI/CD job tokens to access this project’s API.
GITLAB_API_TOKEN (alternative): If this variable is set, it takes priority over CI_JOB_TOKEN. Use a Project Access Token with api scope. This works without any admin settings change and is the easier option if you don’t have project admin access.

Elementary data quality review comment on a GitLab merge request

Limits

20 reviews per hour per Elementary account. Runs beyond that return a rate limit error and post no comment.
500 KB maximum diff size. Larger diffs are rejected, so split very large PRs.
5 minute review timeout. A review that runs past it returns a timeout error instead of a comment.

On GitLab the job is allow_failure: true, so none of these fail your pipeline. On GitHub Actions the step fails, so keep the job out of your required status checks if you do not want a failed review to block merging.

Troubleshooting

No summary comment appears after the job runs Make sure pull-requests: write and issues: write are set under permissions in the workflow. The job posts the summary comment with the built-in GITHUB_TOKEN, and an explicit permissions block sets any unlisted scope to none, so omitting a required scope causes the step to fail. The summary comment appears but no inline comments do Check that post-inline-comments is not set to false, and that your GitHub integration is connected on the Environments page. Elementary posts inline comments through that integration rather than through the CI job. Findings that cannot be anchored to a line in the diff always stay in the summary comment, and inline comments are not available on GitLab. The review says the repository is not connected Go to the Environments page on the sidebar in Elementary Cloud and verify your repository is connected. The page is visible to admins only. The review says the repository is connected to multiple environments Add elementary-env-id to your workflow. The error message lists the available environment IDs.

If a model has never been synced through Elementary, the comment will note that no history is available yet. Results populate automatically after the next Elementary sync.

Getting Started

Elementary AI Agent

MCP Server

Data Tests

Data Lineage

Alerts and Incidents

Performance & Cost

Data Catalog & Governance

Data Health

Config & Administration

Integrations

Resources

Data Quality Code Review

What the review includes

Where findings appear

How it works

Upgrading from v1

Setup

Prerequisites

GitHub Actions

Action inputs

GitLab CI

Limits

Troubleshooting

​What the review includes

​Where findings appear

​How it works

​Upgrading from v1

​Setup

​Prerequisites

​GitHub Actions

​Action inputs

​GitLab CI

​Limits

​Troubleshooting

What the review includes

Where findings appear

How it works

Upgrading from v1

Setup

Prerequisites

GitHub Actions

Action inputs

GitLab CI

Limits

Troubleshooting