Auto-merge waits only for what the branch rule requires, as GitHub puts it: "Auto-merge merges a pull request automatically after all required reviews and status checks pass." Copilot approvals left public preview on 28 October 2026: a Copilot approval can count as one of the required approvals, off by default, turned on by admins, optionally only for listed file paths. The rule counts approvals, not whose they are, so when two people approve while Copilot is still reviewing, as in this question, the pull request merges the same way with approvals on. Waiting for the review itself takes a required status check: Claude Code Review, CodeRabbit and Cursor Bugbot each document one of their own that a branch rule can require. The path GitHub documents for Copilot is the approval.
Every fact below comes from each vendor's own pages as I read them on 5 November 2026, and none of them saw this text before publication.
A branch rule, in a ruleset or in classic branch protection, gives auto-merge two kinds of requirement. Required reviews are a count: administrators "can require that all pull requests receive a specific number of approving reviews before someone merges the pull request into a protected branch", and those approvals can come "from people with write permissions in the repository or from a designated code owner". Required status checks are names: "After enabling required status checks, all required status checks must pass before collaborators can merge changes into the protected branch."
A required check passes when it ends as success, skipped or neutral, and only on the newest commit: "Required checks must pass on the latest commit SHA. Checks from earlier commits don't satisfy the requirement." The rule can also tie a check to the app that posts it: "When you add a required status check, you can select an app that has recently set this check as the expected source of status updates." GitHub's troubleshooting page adds: "A required status check must have completed successfully in the chosen repository during the past seven days."
GitHub describes Require conversation resolution before merging in one line: "Requires all comments on the pull request to be resolved before it can be merged to a protected branch." That covers threads a reviewer has already opened, not a review that is still running.
Agent Merge, announced in GitHub's changelog of 28 October 2026, is about getting a pull request to meet the rule. GitHub's auto-merge page says Copilot can fix failed GitHub Actions workflows and merge conflicts before auto-merge completes, and "Agent Merge fixes the blockers you select, while auto-merge waits for all merge requirements to be met." The Agent Merge page adds that it is a separate switch: "Enabling Agent Merge does not enable auto-merge." Whatever the rule does not require, auto-merge does not wait for.
These are GitHub's steps for letting a Copilot approval count toward the rule, which the next section separates from waiting for Copilot. Approvals work when they are enabled "in repository, organization, and enterprise settings", so the steps start at the top.
Each Copilot review also carries an assessment of whether the pull request is "ready to approve", and that line holds nothing by itself: "On its own, this assessment does not count toward merge requirements."
GitHub describes a Copilot approval as interchangeable with a person's. It satisfies the required-approval rule "the same way a teammate's approval would", and the changelog of 28 October 2026 says "Copilot's approval behaves like a human reviewer's approval." Whichever approvals arrive first close the rule, so if two people approve while Copilot is still reviewing, auto-merge has nothing left to wait for unless a required check is still pending. CodeRabbit's docs say the same about GitHub's approval count in general, "A required approval count does not say who must approve.", and about its own approval, "Two people can also approve the pull request without waiting for CodeRabbit."
Without approvals turned on, a Copilot review takes no part in the count at all: by default Copilot leaves a Comment review, not an Approve or a Request changes review. Require conversation resolution before merging still holds the merge on Copilot's open threads, since "Copilot's review comments behave like review comments from humans.", but only once Copilot has posted them.
A status check posted by Copilot code review, and a setting that requires Copilot's review in particular before a merge, are not found on GitHub's pages about Copilot code review, configuring it, using it, and the available ruleset rules, as of 5 November 2026. On those pages the way into a merge requirement is the approval.
The table puts Copilot code review next to reviewers whose docs say what a required rule does with their check.
| Reviewer | What it posts on the pull request | What a required rule can wait for, in its docs | What it does not guarantee, in its docs |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Copilot code review | a review: a Comment review by default, or an approving review when approvals are on | an approving review, which counts "the same way a teammate's approval would" | that Copilot is among the approvers; new commits dismiss its approval |
| Claude Code Review (Anthropic) | inline findings, a summary and a check run named Claude Code Review | the check run, which "never concludes as a failure, so a finished review doesn't fail a required check" | that findings are dealt with: "You can merge without responding to a finding, unless your repository's own rules require it." |
| CodeRabbit | a check run named CodeRabbit , since 27 October 2026, and a review |
the CodeRabbit check: "A required check blocks merging until the review ends." |
that every pass had a review: "It does not block skipped or rate-limited reviews."; "No setting guarantees that CodeRabbit reviews every pull request before it merges." |
| Cursor Bugbot | a status for each review run, a check named Cursor Bugbot on GitHub |
the Bugbot check, required "to make sure Bugbot runs before merge" | that findings hold the merge: requiring the status alone "does not block merges on findings", because findings default to neutral |
| Sigma (Mnemoverse, the author's company) | "a neutral check per reviewer on the head commit, which tracks the run, and a review with the findings" | its docs: "The check is never a merge gate; its conclusion is always neutral." | a verdict: where the repository's verdict setting is exposed, Rules "can add one separate, deterministic Approve or Request changes review." |
At Claude Code Review, when a command that starts a review is accepted, the check run appears with the title "Code review queued..." and switches to "Code review in progress..." when the review starts; at the end, "The check run concludes as neutral, or as skipped after some pushes that change no files and keep the earlier result." By GitHub's rule a required check passes only as success, skipped or neutral, and by Anthropic's page this one never ends as a failure; read together, a required Claude Code Review check holds the merge while the review is queued or running and lets it through when the review ends, with or without findings. The same page mentions check runs "for a review that failed, timed out, was canceled, or was superseded by a newer one", and since the check never concludes as a failure, a required Claude Code Review check also lets the merge through after a review that failed or timed out. To stop a merge on findings, Anthropic's docs point to your own CI, which reads the severity counts from the last line of the check's Details text with gh and jq. With After every push under Review runs, "a review runs on pushes to the pull request branch".
CodeRabbit's changelog of 27 October 2026: "The review status on GitHub is now a CodeRabbit check run." Its status check page says "Branch rules can require it before a pull request merges." and is plain about the gaps: a skipped or rate-limited review "counts as passing for a required check, but no review happened", and in a merge queue CodeRabbit reports a successful check on the queue's commit, while "CodeRabbit does not review that commit." By default a failed review ends neutral and passes; the page's strongest setup sets reviews.fail_commit_status to true, "so a failed review blocks merging". Its advice for the rest: "To make sure people review what CodeRabbit skipped, also require human approvals." Automatic Approvals, "off by default", make CodeRabbit approve once its feedback is resolved and it has reviewed the latest commit, and "When a review leaves actionable comments, CodeRabbit requests changes."
Cursor's docs say "Bugbot publishes a status for each review run." and "If you use branch protection, require the Bugbot check or build status to make sure Bugbot runs before merge." The status is neutral when Bugbot found issues, and also when "the run was cancelled by a newer commit, or Bugbot hit an internal error"; GitHub counts neutral as passing, so a required Bugbot check lets the merge through after findings and after an internal error. A failing status takes one more setting: "If fail-on-unresolved-issues behavior is available for your organization, enable it to make unresolved findings produce a failing status."
Sigma runs on Claude Code and OpenAI models.
If the review has to finish before the merge, require that reviewer's own check in the branch rule and let it review every push, since GitHub counts only checks on the newest commit. If an AI approval should be able to close the rule, that is the path of Copilot approvals, or of CodeRabbit's Automatic Approvals. If a person has to approve, the count alone does not ensure it once any bot's approval can fill a slot. For a review from a specific team, CodeRabbit's docs point to code owners with Require review from Code Owners turned on. Sources and method: every page below was read on 5 November 2026, each quotation was matched word for word against its page that day, and this text describes the pages as of that date. Switching Copilot's automatic review off, instead of waiting for it, is covered in How to disable Copilot code review in GitHub?.
GitHub: [auto-merge](https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/how-tos/merge-and-close-pull-requests/automatically-merging-a-pull-request), [protected branches](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/configuring-branches-and-merges-in-your-repository/managing-protected-branches/about-protected-branches), [ruleset rules](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/configuring-branches-and-merges-in-your-repository/managing-rulesets/available-rules-for-rulesets), [required status checks](https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/how-tos/merge-and-close-pull-requests/troubleshooting-required-status-checks), [Copilot code review](https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/concepts/agent-capabilities/agent-powered-workflows-and-operations/code-review), [configuring it](https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/copilot-on-github/set-up-copilot/configure-code-review), [using it](https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/use-copilot-agents/use-code-review), [Agent Merge](https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/copilot-on-github/use-copilot-agents/get-pull-requests-ready-to-merge), [Copilot approvals, 28 October 2026](https://github.blog/changelog/2026-10-28-copilot-code-review-merge-with-confidence-with-max-and-approvals/), [Agent Merge, 28 October 2026](https://github.blog/changelog/2026-10-28-agent-merge-watches-and-fixes-pull-requests-in-the-cloud/)
Anthropic: [Code Review](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/code-review), [Code Review on pull requests](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/code-review-pull-requests), [setting it up](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/code-review-setup)
CodeRabbit: [changelog](https://docs.coderabbit.ai/changelog), [status check](https://docs.coderabbit.ai/pr-reviews/status-check), [approval policies](https://docs.coderabbit.ai/pr-reviews/approval-policies), [Automatic Approvals](https://docs.coderabbit.ai/pr-reviews/automatic-approvals)
Cursor: [Bugbot](https://cursor.com/docs/bugbot)
Sigma: [homepage](https://sigma.mnemoverse.com/?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=copilot-review-before-auto-merge), [reading a review](https://sigma.mnemoverse.com/docs/reading-a-review?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=copilot-review-before-auto-merge)