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Auto-approval lets you skip human review for pull requests that cubic determines are low risk and issue-free. When a PR matches your repository policy, cubic can submit the GitHub approval so the change can keep moving. Not every PR needs a human reviewer. Documentation updates, test-only changes, small config edits, and other low-risk PRs can move faster when cubic has already reviewed them and found no issues. Human reviewers can spend their time on changes that need judgment: product logic, infrastructure, security, data models, and other high-impact code. You stay in control by choosing the policy per repository. Auto-approval is disabled by default, and you can test it in shadow mode before cubic submits real GitHub approvals. Auto-approve PR settings showing Shadow behavior, Custom approval policy, a custom prompt, and never-auto-approve rules

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How it works

cubic treats auto-approval as part of the review outcome. If the review is clean and your settings allow approval, cubic can approve the PR. If the PR does not match your policy, cubic leaves a normal review comment instead. Shadow mode is the safe way to start. It keeps cubic in comment-only mode, but adds a summary showing whether cubic would have approved the PR. Start with repositories where the risk is low, such as documentation, internal tools, test fixtures, or repos with narrow change types. Auto-approval settings are configured per repository, so you do not need to roll it out everywhere at once.
  1. Open AI review settings and select one repository.
  2. Set Behavior to Shadow.
  3. Choose Low-risk only or write a Custom policy for that repository.
  4. Watch a few real PRs to see which ones cubic would approve.
  5. Add never-auto-approve rules for sensitive paths, such as migrations or infrastructure.
  6. Switch Behavior to Live when the shadow results match your team’s expectations.
Use different policies for different repositories. A docs repo might use live auto-approval much sooner than a payments, auth, or infrastructure repo.

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Behavior and policy

Behavior controls whether cubic submits real approvals:
  • Disabled: cubic only comments.
  • Shadow: cubic comments and shows what it would have approved.
  • Live: cubic submits a real GitHub approval when the policy allows it.
Approval policy controls which clean PRs are eligible:
  • Low-risk only: recommended default for most repositories.
  • Custom: your own approval criteria, such as “only approve tests and docs.”
  • Always: approves any clean review. Use this only for repositories where that is acceptable.

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Safety controls

Auto-approval is conservative by design:
  • cubic only approves when it finds no review issues.
  • Shadow mode never submits a real approval.
  • Never-auto-approve rules block approval when a PR changes sensitive files.
  • GitHub branch protection still applies, including required checks, required reviewers, and code owner rules.
Use never-auto-approve rules for files that should always get human review, such as migrations, infrastructure, auth, billing, or production configuration. If any changed file in the PR matches one of those patterns, cubic leaves a normal review comment instead of approving. Configure these settings in AI review settings, or version-control them with cubic.yaml.

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Next steps