> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://help.swarmia.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://help.swarmia.com/settings/organization/contributors.md). # Authors An author combines the accounts that represent one person across your connected tools. When the right accounts belong to the same author, Swarmia attributes their pull requests, reviews, commits, and other activity to the right person. Swarmia resolves account matches automatically where possible. Review the [Authors](https://app.swarmia.com/settings/authors) page to make sure the matches are correct, especially after connecting a tool or when an author uses more than one account. Managing author accounts requires the [organization admin or editor role](/settings/organization/managing-users-and-roles.md). ## Find authors and accounts The **Account** column shows each author's connected accounts. The table also shows teams, FTE allocation, and recent activity. Use the search and filters to narrow the list: * Select one or more teams to see their authors, including authors in child teams. * Filter by team membership, activity, accounts, or bots. The **Account** filter can show authors who have or don't have an account from a selected integration. * Select **PRs in last 30d** to find authors who recently opened a pull request.
## How Swarmia matches authors ### Automatic merges Swarmia automatically merges authors when they share an email address and their accounts safely complement each other. For example, one author profile might have a code hosting account and the other a work email from your HR system. To avoid combining different people, Swarmia doesn't automatically merge authors with conflicting accounts from the same source, more than one linked Swarmia user, bots or AI tool accounts, or conflicting author attributes, countries, or FTE allocations. It also won't automatically merge a pair you've rejected as a suggestion. ### Merge suggestions Swarmia suggests possible matches that need a human decision. Suggestions can come from authors who share an email address but don't meet the automatic merge rules, or from matching GitHub accounts, names, usernames, or the names in email addresses. To keep the list focused, Swarmia only shows suggestions that would affect your data. At least one author must be on a team, both authors must have been active in the last 12 months, or an author active in the last 90 days must be missing an account from a source that the other author has. ## Correct account matches ### Review suggested matches When Swarmia finds potential duplicate authors, a banner shows how many merge suggestions need review. Select **Start review** and compare the two authors. Select **Yes** to merge them, **No** to reject the suggestion and stop Swarmia from suggesting the same pair again, or **Skip for now** to decide later.
### Merge authors manually 1. Find the author and select **Edit**. 2. Select **Merge with another author**. 3. Search for and select the author to merge with. 4. Select **Confirm**.
### Move or remove an account To correct one account without merging whole authors: 1. Find the author and select **Edit**. 2. Hover over the relevant account, select **Edit** beside the account. 3. Select **Move to another author** to assign it to an existing author, or select **Remove from this author** to separate it. You can't move or remove the only account on an author, or an account that someone uses to sign in to Swarmia. ## Bots Swarmia detects bot accounts automatically, based on the account type in GitHub and on common naming patterns: a `[bot]` suffix in the username, names starting or ending with `bot` or `ci`, known accounts like `github-actions` and `dependabot`, and GitHub's no-reply bot email addresses. Authors identified as bots show a **Bot** label in the author list. {% hint style="info" %} Automatic detection only covers GitHub accounts. On [GitLab](/settings/integrations/code-hosting-platforms/gitlab.md), mark bots yourself. {% endhint %} {% hint style="info" %} Detection of some known bots relies on GitHub.com account IDs, which don't match on [GitHub Enterprise Server](/settings/integrations/code-hosting-platforms/github/github-enterprise-server.md). On self-hosted GitHub, expect to mark more accounts manually. {% endhint %} You can also mark any author as a bot yourself. ### Marking an author as a bot Marking authors as bots requires the [organization admin or editor role](/settings/organization/managing-users-and-roles.md). 1. Open [Authors](https://app.swarmia.com/settings/authors). 2. Find the author and select **Edit**. The **Bot** toggle appears in the panel on the right 3. Turn the toggle on. Turn the toggle off to treat the author as a person again. You can use the **Bots** filter to show or hide bots in the author list. {% hint style="warning" %} You can't effectively toggle automatically detected bots off, since Swarmia toggles them back on in the next sync if they still match the detection patterns. (Automatic detection only toggles the bot selection on, never off.) {% endhint %}
### What changes when an author is a bot * **Pull requests.** Bot-created pull requests move to the **Bots** tab on the Pull requests page and are left out of the **From others** tab. * **Review metrics.** Reviews and comments from bots don't count toward review metrics, and a bot's review doesn't stop the clock on [time to review](/features/metrics/pull-request-cycle-time/time-to-review.md). Bots don't show up as reviewers or as authors in review reports. ([Review agents](/features/ai-tools/review-agents.md) have their dedicated metrics in Swarmia.) * **Code metrics.** Commits from bots are excluded from commit counts and author counts. * **Developer effort.** Bots and the work related to bot-authored pull requests are excluded from [developer effort (FTEs)](/definitions/developer-effort-ftes.md), and you can't set an FTE value for a bot. * **Notifications.** You don't get [personal notifications](/settings/personal/notifications.md) about pull request comments from bots unless you turn them on, and [team notifications](/settings/team/team-notifications.md) about review requests from bots are off by default. Direct messages about review requests from bots are never sent. * **Surveys.** Bots aren't included in [developer experience surveys](/features/run-developer-experience-surveys.md). Marking an author as a bot applies to historical data too, not just new work. Review-related metrics update once Swarmia has reprocessed the affected pull requests. {% hint style="warning" %} If you mark an author as a bot and later change your mind, their historical developer effort figures aren't recalculated automatically. Email and we'll rebuild them for you. {% endhint %} ### What doesn't change * **Billing.** Marking an author as a bot doesn't change your author count. If your subscription is billed by team members, a bot counts as a team member when you add it to a team, just like a person. * **Overall pull request metrics.** Marking an author as a bot doesn't take their pull requests out of your metrics. Bot-authored pull requests still count toward metrics like cycle time, throughput, and batch size. Only the review parts of those metrics ignore bots. To keep pull requests out of metrics entirely, use [pull request exclusion rules](/settings/organization/pull-request-data-quality.md). * **AI tools.** The bot mark is separate from [AI tool detection](/features/ai-tools/ai-tool-detection-and-filters.md). Most AI coding agents are detected as bots and as AI tools, and changing the bot mark doesn't change how their work is attributed to an AI tool. {% hint style="info" %} **Bots on teams** A pull request belongs to a team when its author is a member of that team, and bots can be team members like anyone else. If you add a bot to a team, [its pull requests show up in that team's metrics](/settings/team/team-pr-exclusions.md) even though it's marked as a bot. Most bots aren't on any team, which is why their pull requests usually don't appear in team views. {% endhint %} ## Frequently asked questions ### What's the difference between an agent and a bot? A **bot** is a property of an author. It tells Swarmia the account isn't a person, so its reviews, comments, and commits stay out of people metrics. Swarmia detects most bots automatically, and you can [mark any author as a bot](#marking-an-author-as-a-bot) yourself. An **agent** is an AI tool Swarmia recognizes in your work: a [cloud agent](/features/ai-tools/cloud-agents.md) that authors pull requests, or a [review agent](/features/ai-tools/review-agents.md) that comments on them. Agents get their own views and metrics under AI tools, and Swarmia identifies them from [AI tool detection](/features/ai-tools/ai-tool-detection-and-filters.md), not from the bot property. You can also define agents yourself by [linking an author to a custom AI tool](/settings/integrations/ai-coding-tool-integrations/custom-ai-tool-integrations.md#link-authors). Most AI coding agents are both. A Copilot cloud agent account, for example, is marked as a bot and its pull requests are attributed to the cloud agent. Changing the bot property doesn't change agent attribution, and it doesn't work the other way around either. Plenty of bots aren't agents, though. `dependabot` and `github-actions` are bots, but they don't use AI, so they don't show up in any of the agent views. --- # Agent Instructions This documentation is published with GitBook. GitBook is the documentation platform designed so that both humans and AI agents can read, navigate, and reason over technical content effectively. Learn more at gitbook.com. ## Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the following URL with the `ask` and `goal` query parameters: ``` GET https://help.swarmia.com/settings/organization/contributors.md?ask=&goal= ``` `ask` is the immediate question: it should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. `goal` is what the user is ultimately trying to achieve, the reason they need the answer. Sharing it helps GitBook give you a better, more relevant answer. A goal is most helpful when it describes the outcome the user wants rather than restating the question. For example, with `ask=how do I create an API token`, a goal like `automate deployments from our CI pipeline` lets GitBook tailor the answer to that use case. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.