Pull Request Velocity as a Proxy for AI Usage for Software Development

While AI have usage has been growing steadily for the last several years, the LLM models noticeably improved around the end of 2025. Specifically, they become more viable for software development. We are seeing the results. The feature and product delivery has picked up. One way to visualize this is by looking at the number of pull requests for your organization / software development teams.  This chart shows the number of Github pull requests created by a team. Can you spot when AI usage increased?

It starts in late November, 2025. This marks the beginning of increased AI usage (for coding) in Sematext. That’s when the LLMs got better. It roughly matches the change in velocity as visualized in JIRA.

Individual AI Adoption

The blurred part are PR author names, which we can use for filtering. If we look at trends of individuals we can spot early adopters like this one:

Or another individual who started making more use of AI later:

Source: Github WebHook Events

This data comes into Sematext via Github Webhook Events. It takes about 5-10 minutes to set up. It can be set up at the Github organization level or for individual repositories.

A Word of Caution

1. There are many software development styles. There are people who commit frequently and incrementally and there are those who keep things to themselves until everything is nearly done. This is a fun chart to look at and is helpful when you want to get the feel for the “pulse” of a team or even an individual. But be careful not to judge people on this sort of data alone. Use this with a grain of salt and in combination with other inputs, observations, etc.
2. Creating more code or PRs doesn’t always equal better code or higher effectiveness. A person may be tapping in the dark trying to debug or implement something with the help of AI and, in the process, creating a lot of (temporary?) code and PRs.
3. As velocity increases, so will regressions, unless you take countermeasures. See Faster Coding with AI and Increased Regressions.

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