How are PRs considered qualified in the AI Impact report when using traces?
Last updated: August 21, 2026
This article applies when your AI Impact report is powered by IDE traces (Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, and similar). Span attributes lines in a pull request to the author’s AI sessions. That only works when we have those traces for the life of the PR.
If your report uses Span-detect-1 instead of traces, see How are PRs considered qualified in the AI Impact report when using Span-detect-1?.
Qualified PRs are not “PRs that used AI.” It is the share of merged PRs Span can include in the AI code ratio: PRs where we have enough trace coverage to measure AI vs human lines reliably. AI usage itself is the AI Code Ratio column.
Why some PRs are left out
If traces were missing, started after the PR was opened, or had gaps while the PR was in flight, including the PR would mean guessing at AI usage. Those PRs stay in the merged-PR total and are excluded from the ratio.
The report therefore shows two numbers:
Column | What it answers | How it is calculated |
|---|---|---|
AI Code Ratio | How much of the measurable diff was AI-authored? | AI-attributed lines ÷ eligible lines, only on qualified PRs |
Qualified PRs | How much of the author’s merged work could we measure? | Qualified merged PRs ÷ all merged PRs in the range |
A low qualified-PR percentage does not mean people are not using AI. It usually means many PRs in the range were opened before traces were being collected, or that traces were incomplete for those PRs. Read AI Code Ratio for adoption; read Qualified PRs for measurement coverage.
Which PRs are in the denominator
Every PR in Qualified PRs (the “of N”) is a merged PR in your selected date range whose author is a development contributor, and whose repository, branches, and author are not ignored in Settings → Metrics.
The date range buckets PRs by merge date. Qualification itself looks at when the PR was opened, because that is when we need traces to start. A PR opened in April and merged in July still does not qualify if trace collection started in June.
When a PR is qualified
A merged PR is qualified when at least one of the following is true:
Strong trace match. At least 20% of the PR’s eligible diff is attributed to the author’s traces.
Continuous traces, even if little or no AI was matched. Span has an analysis result for the PR, the author’s latest trace is at or after merge, and there is no run of two or more weekdays without traces (excluding out-of-office days) around the PR — from 3 days before it opened through 2 days after it merged. A 0% AI PR can still qualify.
Fully agent-authored. Every non-merge commit is agent-authored (or the author is a background agent with no person in the loop), and the PR has a usable ratio.
You do not need to have used AI for a PR to qualify. You do need traces that cover the PR.
When a PR is not qualified
Click Qualified PRs in the report to open the breakdown. Reasons map to these groups:
Reason in the report | What it means |
|---|---|
Opened prior to trace collection | The PR was opened before trace collection started for the organization, or before this author’s first trace. Merge date does not matter. |
Missing user traces data | There is no person author, the PR merged after the author’s last observed trace, or there is a gap in traces while the PR was in flight. Span cannot confirm the diff can be attributed completely. |
All lines ignored | Every changed line is excluded by your ignore rules, so there is no eligible code to analyze. |
Background agents | The PR involved partial collaboration with a background agent. Trace-based attribution does not apply to those PRs. Fully agent-authored PRs can still qualify (see above). |
Diff too large | The diff exceeds the size limit even after ignore rules, so attribution was not run. |
Matched traces too large | Matching traces had too much AI-edit history to attribute in a reasonable time, so attribution was skipped. |
Missing diff data | The PR’s diff accounting is inconsistent (more AI lines than total lines), so a trustworthy ratio cannot be computed. |
Not yet processed | Attribution has not finished for this PR yet. |
How to inspect the PRs
In AI Impact:
Open the people or team table.
Click the Qualified PRs value.
Use Non-qualified PRs → View PRs to open the catalog filtered to that reason.
The date picker cannot start before your organization’s trace-collection start. PRs merged in the selected range can still be unqualified if they were opened before that start.
Bottom line
Measure AI adoption on work Span can actually attribute from traces. Qualified PRs is coverage of that measurement, not a usage score. Once traces have been collecting for a while, the qualification rate typically rises; AI Code Ratio on those PRs is the adoption number to compare across people and teams.