Set up Hound

Install the GitHub App

Hound ships as a GitHub App. Click below to open the installation page on GitHub — you'll need admin access on the target account or organization.

Select your repositories

During installation GitHub will ask which repositories Hound can access. You can start with one repo or grant access to all of them — you can always update this later in GitHub Settings → Applications → Hound → Repository access.

Once a repo is selected, every new or updated pull request on that repo will automatically trigger a Hound review. No webhook configuration or secrets to manage on your end.

Trigger your first review

Reviews fire automatically on every PR push. You can also trigger one on demand via the API — useful for CI pipelines, re-reviews after a fix, or testing the integration.

Requires $HOUND_API_TOKEN and the GitHub App already installed on the target repo (step 1 above).

Async (default) — responds immediately, review runs in the background:

curl -X POST https://<host>/api/reviews \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HOUND_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"repo":"owner/name","pr_number":42}'

Response when the job is accepted:

{
  "status": "queued",
  "repo": "owner/name",
  "pr_number": 42
}

Sync (?wait=true) — blocks until the review finishes and returns the full verdict:

curl -X POST "https://<host>/api/reviews?wait=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HOUND_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"repo":"owner/name","pr_number":42}'

Response once the review completes:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "repo": "owner/name",
  "pr_number": 42,
  "review_id": 17,
  "comment_posted": true
}

• ✓ status: "queued" means Hound accepted the job — check the PR for the comment when it lands.
• ✓ status: "ok" with comment_posted: true means the verdict is already on the PR.
• ✓ Errors return 400 (invalid body) or 500 (review failure) with a JSON error field.