Allison reports on GitHub Copilot’s new standalone repository rule for automatic code reviews, providing teams with granular control over review triggers and workflow integration.

Automatic Copilot Code Review: Standalone Repository Rule Now Available

GitHub Copilot users can now enable automatic code review with a dedicated repository rule, expanding the flexibility and control available to development teams. Previously, automatic Copilot code reviews could only be triggered as part of the Require a pull request before merging policy. This update decouples Copilot reviews from merge gating, allowing automatic reviews to be applied more broadly and granularly.

What’s New

Standalone Copilot Review Rule: Admins can add or edit rulesets to include Copilot code review as an independent automation.
Subsettings for Fine-Tuning:
- Run on each push: Automatically reruns reviews when new commits are pushed.
- Run on drafts: Enables Copilot to review draft pull requests, allowing authors to iterate before a human review is requested.
Flexible Integration: Teams can start with code reviews on creation only and extend to on-push or on-draft scenarios for added coverage and signal control.

For example, teams working with critical branches can enforce tighter review loops with on-push reviews. Alternatively, enabling on-draft reviews helps iterate code quality before pulling in additional reviewers.

How to Enable

Open your repository’s Settings and navigate to Rules → Rulesets.
Add or modify a ruleset to include the new automatic Copilot code review option.
Choose from the available subsettings (on-push, on-draft) to tailor the review flow to your team’s needs.
Save the ruleset and test by opening a new pull request.

For more details and technical instructions, refer to the GitHub documentation.

Join the community conversation in GitHub Community: Copilot Conversations.

This post appeared first on “The GitHub Blog”. Read the entire article here