Historical Backfill

Scoring Past Work

By default, GitVelocity scores pull requests as they merge going forward. But if you want to see how your team's velocity looked before you started using the platform, you can trigger a historical backfill to analyze previously merged PRs.

How It Works

After connecting a repository, navigate to its settings page and start a backfill. You choose how many months of history to analyze. We recommend starting with at least three months -- enough for meaningful trends without a long wait. GitVelocity retrieves merged pull requests from the selected window and analyzes each one with Claude AI, applying the same six-dimension scoring framework used for new PRs.

Processing Time

Each PR takes approximately 30 seconds to analyze. For a repository with 200 merged PRs in the backfill window, expect the process to take roughly 90 minutes to complete. Larger repositories will take proportionally longer.

Background Processing

Backfill runs entirely in the background. You can continue using the dashboard, viewing scores for already-processed PRs, and working with other repositories while the backfill progresses. There is no need to keep the browser open.

Progress Tracking

A progress indicator on the repository settings page shows how many PRs have been processed and how many remain. You can check back at any time to see the current status.

Why Backfill Matters

Establish Baselines

Backfilled data gives you a baseline for comparison. When you can see velocity from the past several months, current performance has meaningful context.

Identify Trends

Historical scores reveal long-term patterns that would otherwise be invisible -- seasonal shifts, the impact of team changes, or gradual increases in complexity as a codebase matures.

Immediate Value

Instead of waiting weeks or months to accumulate enough data for useful trends, backfill lets you start with a rich dataset from day one.

Frequently Asked Questions

How far back can I backfill?

You can set any number of months. We recommend starting with at least three months to establish meaningful trend lines. You can always run a larger backfill later if you want deeper history.

Does backfill cost extra?

No. Backfill is included and uses the same scoring pipeline as real-time analysis. If you are using your own Anthropic API key, backfill will consume API credits at the same rate as forward scoring -- approximately one API call per PR.

What happens if I run a backfill again?

Subsequent runs skip PRs that have already been scored. You will not be charged twice for the same pull request, even if you rerun a backfill over the same time window or extend the range. Only unscored PRs are analyzed. If you need to rescore a specific PR, you can do that manually from the pull request page, but there is no bulk rescore -- this is intentional to prevent accidentally consuming a large number of API credits.