LGTM stands for 'Looks Good To Me,' an acronym programmers type to approve code changes during peer review.

Where did LGTM come from?

The acronym came out of Google's internal engineering culture, where developers emailed each other diffs and replied 'looks good to me' to greenlight checkins; Niall Kennedy documented the workflow in a November 2006 post about Google's Mondrian review tool.

Literally 'Looks Good To Me,' signaling that the reviewer approves a code change. Joke expansions include 'Let's Get This Merged' and 'Literally Garbage To Me'.

Type the four letters in a pull request comment, review email, or chat message after reading a code change, as a quick approval marker.

Is LGTM still popular?

LGTM became a standard approval marker on GitHub pull requests after the site launched in 2008 and inspired reaction-image tools like rahulsom/lgtmin.

LGTM

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Published November 15, 2026

LGTM, short for 'Looks Good To Me,' started as internal Google code review slang in the mid-2000s before Niall Kennedy documented it publicly in November 2006. The acronym migrated to GitHub comments after the site launched in 2008, where it became a common approval marker on pull requests. By 2013, developers were making rubber stamps and curating reaction GIF databases around it.

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Overview

LGTM works as a quick approval stamp during code review. A reviewer types the four letters in a comment or email reply and the author takes it as permission to merge. On GitHub, maintainers often post it on pull requests without any other text, which spawned the rahulsom/lgtmin project that replaces plain 'LGTM' with reaction images for busier review cycles2.

Variants live in a few registers. Some developers read the acronym as 'Let's Get This Merged,' per an Urban Dictionary entry, keeping the merge-centric meaning4. Joke expansions like 'Literally Garbage To Me' invert the approval for comedic rejection, used when a reviewer wants to trash a change under the guise of the familiar four letters4.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Google internal email (origin) / GitHub (viral spread)

Date

2006

Guido van Rossum showed off Mondrian, Google's internal code review tool, at a Python tech talk in November 2006, and blogger Niall Kennedy summarized the system that same evening1. Kennedy's post described how Google developers emailed each other diffs via the g4 mail tool, then waited for a reply of 'looks good to me,' shortened to lgtm, before checking in their changes1. The expression was already standard practice inside Google at that point, which means the acronym itself predates the first public write-up.

Urban Dictionary user akshay_s submitted the first public definition for the term on August 1, 2007, cementing its reading as 'Looks Good To Me'4.

How It Spread

GitHub launched in April 2008, and the public open-source community adopted the acronym for pull request reviews. Comments on public repositories filled with bare 'LGTM' approvals so often that software engineer Rachel Kroll wrote in April 2010 about commissioning a physical rubber stamp with the letters, flagging the double meaning: rubber-stamping a code review is exactly what the term 'rubber stamp' criticizes3.

By February 24, 2013, deviantART member Nushe4ka uploaded a photo of a 3D-printed LGTM stamp, giving the joke a physical object3. That July, a reaction GIF database launched at LGTM.in, letting reviewers trade static text for animated approvals3. Developer Rahul Somasunderam's rahulsom/lgtmin GitHub repository packages the same idea as a tool for crowdsourcing LGTM images during busy review cycles2.

Timeline

2006-11-30

Niall Kennedy publishes a write-up of Google's Mondrian code review tool, documenting the internal 'looks good to me' / lgtm convention for the first time.

2007-08-01

Urban Dictionary user akshay_s submits the first public definition of LGTM as 'Looks Good To Me.'

2008-04

GitHub launches, and open-source maintainers adopt LGTM as a quick pull request approval.

2010-04-12

Software engineer Rachel Kroll blogs about ordering an LGTM rubber stamp and the self-aware joke about rubber-stamping reviews.

2013-02-24

DeviantART user Nushe4ka uploads a photo of a 3D-printed LGTM stamp.

2013-07

A dedicated LGTM reaction GIF database launches at LGTM.in.

How to Use This Meme

Reviewers typically type LGTM in a code review comment, email reply, or chat message after reading someone else's code change1. On GitHub, the common convention is to post it as a bare comment on a pull request, often alongside an approve action2.