Kintsugi
Tax ComplianceScaling to 1,000 Monthly PRs: Kintsugi Eliminates Stale Pull Requests with PullFlow
How a rapidly growing tax compliance company eliminated pull request visibility gaps during hypergrowth.
Kintsugi automates indirect tax compliance globally, handling sales tax, VAT, GST, excise tax, and use tax for businesses worldwide. With a simple, "flip a switch" experience, Kintsugi manages calculation, monitoring, remittance, and filings — ensuring companies remain compliant with governments around the world. As a rapidly scaling company processing nearly 1,000 pull requests each month, Kintsugi faced the challenge of maintaining engineering visibility and velocity during explosive team growth.
The Challenge of Hypergrowth
When you're processing hundreds of pull requests across a fast-growing engineering team, traditional GitHub workflows can quickly break down. For Kintsugi, the standard setup of email notifications and GitHub's native UI created significant visibility gaps that threatened development velocity.
Key Challenges:
• Processing many pull requests monthly across multiple repositories
• Lost pull requests sitting open for more than a week without resolution
• Fully approved PRs waiting for someone to press merge
• Email-centric notifications vanishing into unchecked inboxes
• No clear way to track progress or understand bottlenecks
The core issue centered on what Jeff Gibson, Kintsugi's CTO and Co-Founder, calls lost pull requests — PRs that sat open for more than a week without resolution. These weren't complex architectural changes requiring deep discussion; they were often fully approved PRs waiting for someone to press the merge button. Team members found themselves blocked, waiting on feedback with no clear way to track progress or understand bottlenecks.
We're processing 900 to 1,000 pull requests monthly across multiple repositories. That volume creates massive visibility challenges.
Finding the Right Solution
As an early-stage company focused on execution speed, Kintsugi needed a solution that could be evaluated and implemented quickly. PullFlow's approach aligned perfectly.
The key differentiator was PullFlow's Slack-first design. Instead of introducing another tool to monitor, PullFlow brought PR visibility directly into Kintsugi's existing communication channels. This was particularly valuable for Gibson, who needed to stay informed across multiple responsibilities while frequently working mobile.
The onboarding experience proved remarkably smooth, allowing the team to assess functionality and benefits immediately, without disrupting existing workflows.
Immediate Impact: From Chaos to Clarity
We had virtually no setup time and could immediately see results. That instant clarity made the decision easy.
Consolidating High-Volume PR Management
The transformation began with Gibson's daily routine. Instead of tracking hundreds of monthly PRs across multiple repositories through GitHub's UI, his day now starts in the PullFlow channel. This consolidated view enables proactive management at scale. When Gibson spots threads with many comments, he can investigate potential blockers. When he sees merged items, he immediately provides updates on production timelines.
Faster Response Without Context Switching
PullFlow's integration eliminated the friction of constant GitHub navigation for quick interactions. Gibson can handle many PR-related communications directly from Slack — looping in testers, notifying stakeholders of feature progress, or adding reviewers — all without leaving the workspace.
Leadership from Anywhere
For an executive juggling multiple responsibilities, mobile accessibility proved transformational. Gibson can now maintain full PR visibility from his phone, enabling real-time oversight wherever he is.
PullFlow Features Used:
Quantifiable Results
According to Gibson, PullFlow reduced lost (stale) pull requests by at least 50%. This improvement directly translated to more predictable delivery timelines and reduced stakeholder friction — no more discovering that fully approved PRs were waiting to be merged weeks after planned deployment.
Beyond measurable outcomes, PullFlow enabled proactive intervention. Gibson can now spot potential issues early by identifying highly commented threads, redirecting approaches before they become costly delays.
Enabling Sustainable Scale
As Kintsugi continues expanding its tax compliance platform and engineering team, PullFlow provides the visibility foundation necessary for sustainable development velocity. The system that now manages nearly 1,000 monthly PRs is designed to scale with continued team growth. For rapidly scaling companies like Kintsugi, PullFlow transforms code review from a bottleneck into a streamlined, transparent process that grows with the team.
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