Using Govlin
Every Govlin screen has the same top: the section and the question it answers, the answer as the title, a status line, and the context Govlin already knows (organization, repository, branch, connection). Govlin never asks for context it already has.
Rules and Settings have guides of their own: Rules and Connect Govlin.
Action Center: what needs my attention?
The home for everyone. It is an inbox:
- List: one row per cause. Each cause appears once, and a problem Govlin cannot determine for you is not shown.
- Problem: what is happening, why it matters, one primary action, and the evidence behind it (coverage, the affected changes, pipeline runs).
- Details: state, area, what it affects, what fixes it, and What Govlin receives today, one line per integration.
The status line reads Setup · Release · Evidence, and Updated X ago is the real time the data behind the screen was loaded.
Typical problems: changes Govlin could not link to a ticket, no CI result in the window, an integration that sends no data, or an organization profile that is not saved.
Workspace: what am I changing?
Workspace only exists to prepare and send the current change: files, diff, branch, stage, commit, push and a terminal.
- Change flow: Ticket → Branch → Stage → Commit → Push / PR → CI pipeline, with the next local step.
- Change impact, computed on your computer from the local Git history:
- size and review time (reviews find most defects up to about 400 lines per hour);
- sensitive areas: database, CI/CD, auth, infrastructure, secrets and config, dependencies;
- hotspots and files that usually change together but are missing from your change;
- Ready to push: every commit names a ticket, the branch carries one, and how far it is from its base.
- Rule signals: traceability, review and CI, as the repository rules define them.
Nothing from the change impact analysis leaves your computer.
Releases: can this ship?
A release is a repository plus an immutable commit (the tag or version is its human name). It appears when the CI asks for a deployment authorization, a decision is recorded for a commit, or someone evaluates a commit.
State per environment, computed live from the strongest effect among failing rules:
| State | When |
|---|---|
| Ready to proceed | Everything passes, or only record-only rules fail |
| With warnings | A rule that warns fails |
| Requires approval | A rule that requires approval fails; Govlin says which rule and who can approve |
| Blocked | A blocking rule fails; Govlin names the rule |
Human decisions are shown apart and never change the computed state: Approved, Risk accepted or Rejected, with author, date and the hash of the evidence they relied on.
- Evaluate a commit: pick a merged commit that cites a ticket. Govlin prepares its evidence and computes whether it can ship. Evaluating records nothing.
- Record a decision: choose the decision and the risk level. The approver is the signed-in person; the evidence hash comes from the evaluation.
- Advanced tools advise and never approve or block: change risk and CAB packets, the history of CI authorizations (risk context, CAB manifests, break-glass) and a multi-repository view.
Approval, exception and bypass are different things. A rule that blocks with no exception is never overridden by a decision.
Releases is an administrator view today.
Evidence: what happened and how do I prove it?
The title says how many changes of the last 72 hours have a verified ticket. The status line shows traceability, the pipeline over 7 days and any GitHub signal that does not arrive.
Three views:
- Changes: commits sent from the Desktop and merged pull requests (not the full Git history). Search by ticket, commit, branch or author and filter by all, with ticket or without ticket. The details show origin, author, branch, repository, pipeline, quality, the real number of pull request approvals, the Jira tickets and the files.
- Tickets without code: the tickets Govlin received from Jira that no change of the window cites, with their title and Jira status.
- Audit: what you hand to an auditor.
- Evidence of a ticket: its commits, pull requests, pipeline runs and quality results in one file. The download says what is missing.
- Event history export: a JSON file with every event of a date range and a summary of the GitHub evidence, followed by the previous exports.
- Activity on this computer: pushes, branches and blocked attempts this Desktop recorded.
- Review against control frameworks: maps deployment evidence to control frameworks your organization imports. Govlin certifies nothing, and exported files keep their no-certification flags.
Everyone sees the changes. Tickets without code and Audit need an administrator.
Ask
Ask is a conversation available on every screen: press Ctrl+J or the Ask button. It opens as a side panel and can be expanded.
- Subject: the screen offers what you selected (a change or ticket in Evidence, a release in Releases) and the panel shows it as "About …". You can remove it.
- Answers: with a ticket or commit as subject, the answer uses that evidence and cites its sources, with links to where they live in Govlin. Other questions go to the team activity chat, for example who pushed where and when.
- Honesty: when the AI answer is not available, the answer says it is an evidence summary. When data is missing, it says so.
- Who: administrators, architects and PMs. Ask only uses what you could see yourself, and the conversation lives only for the session.