The Copilot approval workflow to count toward merge requirements depends on a set of conditions: enterprise policy, organization policy, repository settings enabling Copilot approvals to count, file path glob matching, Copilot’s readiness assessment, and ensuring no commits were pushed after the approval.

Repository-level settings use a two-toggle design: one to permit Copilot to post an Approve review, and a second to allow that approval to count toward merge requirements, with up to 15 file path globs restricting applicability.

Updates rolled out on September 11, 2026, including Copilot resolving its own comments on re-review, running shell tools behind a firewall, and an ensemble of agents at a Lite effort level to improve coverage and reduce review costs.

Some aspects—such as Code Owners and CODEOWNERS, last-push approvals, and interactions with the unattributed-Copilot PR rule—remain incompletely documented, so testing in sandbox environments is advised before production use.

Real-world use cases highlighted include documentation repositories, generated client SDKs, additional human secondary approvals, targeted module paths like Terraform changes, and inner-source contributions, illustrating where Copilot approvals can meaningfully reduce toil while preserving safety.

Practical governance guidance emphasizes path-scoped allow-lists (for example docs/** and Markdown files in documentation PRs), designating human code owners for critical paths, and validating behavior with sandbox PRs to understand approval dynamics.

Automatic review operates under REST rulesets (copilot_code_review) with parameters such as review_on_push and review_draft_pull_requests, separate from approvals, which has implications for auto-resolution behavior.

Caveats include a 15-glob limit, exclusions like dependency files, logs, and SVGs, potential re-review repetition, budget constraints on review availability, reliance on GitHub Actions for agent operations, and the preview status indicating possible changes ahead.

Public previews for Copilot Pro began on September 1, 2026, with approval assessments shown in overview comments and approvals counting toward merge requirements only under defined enterprise/org/repository policies.

Copilot code review now features an approval assessment and can submit an approving review that counts toward required approvals when enabled, marking a shift from purely advisory to a potential control-plane role.