GitHub now sells the whole unattended merge loop: fix, review, approve, merge
At Universe, GitHub put Agent Merge into pull requests and made Copilot approvals generally available. Paired with auto-merge, a PR can go from red to merged with no human in the room, unless you leave one in on purpose.
Source: Agent Merge watches and fixes pull requests in the cloud — GitHub Changelog
GitHub shipped two changes on October 28 that fit together. Agent Merge, already in the Copilot app and VS Code, now lives in the pull request merge box: pick "Watch and fix" and Copilot starts a cloud environment whenever a failing Actions workflow or a merge conflict blocks the PR, and works on it until the blocker clears. You can turn it on for every PR you open, and GitHub's own suggestion is to combine it with auto-merge so "Copilot gets and keeps your pull request ready to merge, and GitHub merges it as soon as all requirements are met."
The same day, Copilot approvals went generally available, alongside a new Max review level in preview that runs several independent review agents on models from different providers and has an aggregation agent reconcile their findings. When an admin enables approvals, Copilot's approval counts toward required reviews, scoped to the file paths the admin allows. Approvals stay off by default.
Why it matters for code review
Put those together and a repository can run the full loop around the clock: an agent opens a PR, Agent Merge keeps CI green and the branch rebased, Copilot reviews and approves, and auto-merge lands it. That is the always-on factory pattern people have been hand-building with cron jobs and merge drivers, now available as a few settings.
The detail worth reading twice is the one carried over from the preview: a Copilot approval is dismissed when new commits land, just like a human's. Agent Merge fixes things by pushing commits. So every overnight fix voids the approval it was meant to protect and sends the PR back through review. That is the correct behavior, and it means the cost of continuous fixing shows up as review volume. It will also be the first rule someone wants an exception for.
The governance choice hasn't changed. It has just moved into the settings page. Which paths Copilot may approve, and whether Max is required on them, is now the actual line between work that can merge while everyone is asleep and work that waits for a person.