How I Tamed Bugbot’s Costly Chaos for My Team with Simple Settings Fixes

I started using Bugbot in the Cursor IDE, hoping for smooth bug detection. But I hit a snag: my settings didn’t apply to my team, leading to unexpected costs and clutter. Here’s how I tackled the problem and found fixes to protect our budget.

The Core Problem: Settings Ignored and Costs Skyrocketing

As a team admin, I thought Bugbot settings applied to the whole organization. So I set options like “no comments if no bugs found” to cut down on noise.

But surprise! Our pull requests were still flooded with feedback, even when no bugs existed. This wasn’t just annoying – it was burning through our budget. Our $100 trial credit disappeared in less than 5 hours, with only 40 engineers using it.

The root cause? Bugbot settings are personal for each user, not controlled by admins. I couldn’t set defaults for my entire team.

My Step-by-Step Journey to Regain Control

After some investigation, I found practical ways to reduce the chaos. Here’s what I did:

• Enable the Allow List Feature: I went into Bugbot settings and turned on the allow list. This restricted Bugbot runs to specific GitHub users, stopping automatic triggers on every push. That cut down on costly re-runs.
• Manually Add Users: I added my teammates’ GitHub usernames to the allow list. For Cursor users, I told them to connect their GitHub accounts in settings and click “Add Me”. That gave them control over when Bugbot runs.
• Adjust Personal Settings Where Possible: Without global defaults, I asked team members to turn off “comment if no bugs found” in their settings. This reduced noise, especially for non-Cursor users who couldn’t change it themselves.

Key Insights and Tips for Admins

Here’s what I learned: controlling costs means stopping unnecessary runs. Start with the allow list as your main defense.

Admin-level defaults aren’t an option yet, but this method kept us from turning off Bugbot completely.

Always test settings with a small group first. That way, you avoid budget shocks.

For teams like ours, features like “only run once per PR” or organization-wide defaults would make a huge difference. They’d help balance new ideas with everyday use.