The News, Explained

In a changelog dated November 6, GitHub announced a change to Copilot’s code review overview. Copilot examines changes in a pull request and comments on places it identifies as potential problems. A pull request asks for a review of proposed changes before they become part of a project. The update is available on Copilot Pro, Pro+, Max, Business and Enterprise. Source Source

The new overview puts findings at the top. It brings files that Copilot skipped and files excluded by settings into one section called “Files not reviewed,” with links explaining the exclusions. When a change touches several files, that gives you a place to look for a file with no comments. Long lists show how many more items there are, and empty sections stay hidden. The review effort has moved to the footer. Effort is the setting that tells Copilot how deeply to analyze the change. Source Source

The API teams use for automation has changed too. Teams could already request a review and pick an effort level through the REST API. New fields identify which reviews and comments came from Copilot and can show the effort used when that information is available. You can also see which instructions or tools Copilot reported using for a comment. That record helps you trace what informed the comment. Source Source

The settings an administrator can change depend on their role. An organization cannot override a setting managed by its enterprise. GitHub Apps and fine-grained personal access tokens can reach repository settings through the API with the appropriate administration permission. Those same credentials do not work for the organization or enterprise settings endpoints. A team managing many repositories needs to match the scope of the setting to the way it signs in to the API. Source

OYOPICK’s Take

Read the findings alongside the files that received no review. Imagine a change that touches payment logic and a configuration file. If the configuration file is on the exclusion list, resolving every comment on the payment logic still leaves the configuration for a person to read. When the list is too long to show all the filenames, the count also helps you judge how much is missing from view. Making that gap visible can help a team decide where to spend its next review pass. Source