Using Src to understand your engineering metrics
Last updated: November 12, 2026
Src is Span's AI research agent. You ask a question in plain English, in Span or in Slack, and Src queries your Span data with your permissions, then answers with citations, charts, or a file you can download.
Why it matters
Dashboards show what changed. Src helps you find out why, and turns the answer into something you can share. You can ask follow-up questions in the same thread, drill into the pull requests behind a number, or ask for a spreadsheet, PDF, or slide deck built from the result.
How it works
It queries Span as you. Src reads your organization's knowledge graph: people, teams, pull requests, commits, reviews, issues, deployments, incidents, investment, surveys, calendar data, and agent traces when your organization collects them. Questions you ask in Span or in Slack run with your own permissions, so metrics and people data in an answer cover only the teams and people you can see in Span.
It explains Span itself. Ask "How does Span calculate PR cycle time?" and Src answers from Span's help content.
It computes and builds files. Src can crunch the data it fetched, draw charts, and create CSV, XLSX, PDF, or PPTX files with a download link. Charts offer Download plot as PNG.
It cites its sources. Answers link each number to the data query behind it, so you can open the citation and check it.
You pick the mode. Next to the chat box:
Mode
What it does
Auto (default)
Lets the model switch between modes
Research
Slower to respond but better for complex questions. Src writes a plan, tracks it as a task list, and checks its answer and citations before replying.
Normal
Faster, shorter answers for quick lookups and metric summaries
You can attach files. Add up to 4 files, 20 MB each: images, PDFs, text, JSON, or XML. Src uses their contents in its answer.
Threads are private by default. Use Share to give specific people access, or to let anyone in your organization with the link view the thread.
What Src can see
Use Src opens Src. It doesn't widen access. The Use Src permission lets someone use Src, and Manage Src lets them change its settings. Owners and Admins have both by default. The built-in Team Members group has neither, so an admin adds Use Src to the permission groups that should have it. Use Src doesn't change which teams, people, or data Src can read for that person.
Team and people data follow your permissions. Src answers about a team's metrics only for teams you can see, and about a named person's individual metrics only for people whose individual data you can see. With only the built-in Team Members group, that's your own teams, and yourself as the only individual. Seeing a team's totals doesn't let you pull a teammate's individual numbers.
Surveys and agent traces need their own permissions. Src reads survey responses only for people with Manage Surveys, and agent trace data only for people with the Agent Trace permissions. Trace contents follow the same privacy rules as everywhere else in Span.
Code and the organization catalog are organization-wide. Repositories, projects, services, deployments, and incidents aren't tied to individual people, so everyone who uses Src can ask about them. When Span has turned on code exploration for your organization, Src can answer questions about code in any repository allowed under Settings → Src, including one owned by a team whose metrics you can't see.
Playbooks run as their executor. A Playbook uses the access of its creator ("Run as me") or of a service account, not the access of whoever triggers it or reads its output. See Using Src Playbooks.
What you can ask
"What is each team's PR cycle time this quarter?"
"Who are the top contributors to the backend repository in the last 30 days?"
"Show me PRs with the longest review times."
"Investigate where the PR review bottlenecks are for the Platform team."
"Why did cycle time increase last sprint? Show the PRs behind it."
"Turn this into a five-slide PPTX for my leadership review."
"Show me all PRs merged directly into master, excluding any that were previously merged into staging."
"What's the average merge time for PRs merged into staging over the last 90 days?"
"Compare cycle time for PRs that went through staging vs. those merged directly to master."
Setup
Open Src. In Span, click Src in the left navigation, under Organization. You'll also find Ask Src and similar buttons on report pages, metric tooltips, and search, which open Src with the page's filters already loaded.
Ask a question. Type it in the chat box, pick Auto, Research, or Normal, and send.
Use Slack (optional). If an admin has installed the Src app in Slack, you can DM Src, @mention it in an allowed channel, or use
/src. See Src Slack Setup Guide.
Admins can adjust Src under Settings → Src: which Slack channels and people can use Src, which repositories Src may read when code exploration is on (empty allows all), whether Src may read detailed pull request data, and whether it may run internet searches.
Things to know
Check the scope and time window. Src answers from the data its tools return and says when data is missing, but it can still misread a question. It may use a smaller team than you meant, or a filter that returns no rows. Open the citation to confirm the team, date range, and filters before you share a number.
Worked example. You ask, "How many PRs did the organization merge in September?" and Src replies 0. Opening the citation shows the query filtered on a status value that matched nothing. Ask Src to re-run it without that filter, or check PRs merged on the Productivity page for the same window.
Worked example: asking about a person. Jo is on the Payments team, in the built-in Team Members group with Use Src added. Jo asks, "What's the Payments team's PR cycle time this quarter, and what's Sam's?" Src gives the team's cycle time, because Jo can see Payments team data. It doesn't give Sam's individual cycle time, because Team Members can see individual data only for themselves. A manager whose permissions cover Sam gets both numbers.
Numbers can differ slightly from dashboards. Src and the dashboards filter data separately. If they disagree, compare the filters in the citation with the dashboard's filters.
Code questions need code exploration. Src answers from your Span data. It reads source code only when Span has turned on code exploration for your organization, for GitHub and GitHub Enterprise Server repositories.
Name the team and the period. "PR cycle time for the backend team, July 1 to September 30" gets a better answer than "what's the cycle time?"
Use Research mode for multi-step investigations, and ask follow-ups in the same thread. Src keeps the conversation history, so you don't need to repeat context.
Treat generated files as drafts. Src builds the deck or spreadsheet from the data it found. Review it before you send it on.
When analyzing deployment flows, Src can correlate branches across multiple PRs — if the same branch has PRs to both staging and master, Src identifies this as a single unit of work and avoids double-counting in metrics.
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Need help?
Contact your Span account team or reach out to support@span.app.