Review and approve agent actions on issues (Public Preview)

[alondahari]

When you set up a Copilot agent automation or Agentic Workflows, the agent can now explain why it made each change and, optionally, ask for your approval before changes take effect.

issues.agentic.review.mp4

Note

This is a preview feature and is experimental. Behavior and availability may change.

What's new

• Rationale: Every action the agent takes (setting type, adding labels, filling fields) includes a short explanation of why. Visible in the Agent suggestions panel on the issue page and via the ⓘ icon on timeline events.
• Suggestions: Instead of applying changes directly, the agent can propose them as pending suggestions. You approve or reject from the issue page, individually or in bulk.
• Confidence: The agent reports how certain it is about each suggestion (LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH). You can set a confidence threshold in your repo's settings to automatically route lower confidence requests to become suggestions, and higher confidence to be automatically applied.

Currently supported for issue type, labels, issue fields, closing issues and assigning users / agents. We plan to expand to additional actions in the future.

Setup (Copilot cloud agent)

1. In your repository, go to Agents → Automations
2. Click Create New and choose the trigger Issue opened
3. Add a prompt:
   • To apply changes directly: "Triage this issue. Set labels and issue type."
   • To require approval first: "Triage this issue and suggest labels and issue type for approval."
4. Enable the List issue fields, Set issue fields, and Set issue type tools.

This is one example of an automation you can create. You can use any of the supported tools and prompt the agent to create powerful automations!

Rationale is always included automatically. To require approval, include the word "suggest" in your prompt. Low-confidence actions are routed to approval regardless.

Feedback

This is a public preview. Please share feedback in this discussion. If you would like to opt out, please post in this discussion or make the change in your repo settings.

Guidelines

• I have read the above statement and can confirm my post is relevant to the GitHub feature areas Issues and/or Projects.