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A reliable coding-agent workflow has four distinct decisions: describe the change you want, govern what the agent may do, inspect the work it produced, and decide whether to keep it. Approval controls whether an action may happen; inspection evaluates the resulting code. Neither replaces the other.
1. Describe the task so the result is reviewable
Give the agent a goal, the context it needs, the boundaries of the requested change, and a definition of done. A clear request gives you a basis for comparing the intended outcome with the actual diff.
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- State the behavior: describe what should happen, including relevant success and error paths.
- Bound the scope: name the files, components, or behavior in scope, and say what should remain unchanged.
- Set review criteria: specify project conventions or conditions the change must satisfy.
- Ask for evidence: when investigating a concern, ask which code supports the finding so you can verify it directly.
For example, a review request can ask how a change affects sign-in, whether an error path releases a database connection, or which code supports a particular finding. OpenAI’s pull-request review guidance recommends focusing the request on relevant behavior or criteria and limiting the scope of a fix. Keep the instruction specific enough to guide the work, but do not treat the agent’s explanation as proof that the implementation is correct.
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Set the technical boundary and the approval policy to match the task. They address different risks: a sandbox limits where an agent can write and whether it can reach the network; an approval policy determines when it must ask before acting. OpenAI describes them as complementary in its guidance on running Codex safely.
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- Use the narrowest practical workspace and access for the task.
- Require confirmation for actions whose effects should not happen without a person’s decision.
- For custom agent tools that can cause side effects, put the relevant checks next to the tool call. OpenAI’s Agents SDK guardrails guidance notes that agent-level guardrails do not run around every custom tool call.
A later diff review cannot undo an external action that has already happened. Decide in advance which actions need a gate; then inspect the code separately after the agent finishes.
3. Inspect the change and its context
Before evaluating code, establish what you are looking at. For a pull request, confirm the repository, branch, purpose, and author. Then examine the change itself rather than relying only on its summary or automated comments.
- Read the change description and compare it with the task’s definition of done.
- Review the changed files and relevant diff lines, including surrounding code where behavior depends on context.
- Read findings and comments, then verify each important claim against the code.
- Check the test results, other status checks, and any unresolved merge conflicts.
- Compare the implementation with the project’s rules and the requested scope.
For Codex pull-request reviews, OpenAI advises: “Review generated findings against the relevant code before relying on them.” Automated findings can help direct attention, but the cited guidance does not establish that they are always correct. If a finding is unclear, ask for the supporting code and inspect it yourself. The Codex review guide also describes asking for an explanation or a bounded fix.
4. Validate behavior, not just the diff
Run the tests relevant to the changed behavior and inspect their results. Use debugging or other editor tools when tests alone do not answer whether the code behaves as intended. Validation adds evidence; it does not replace reading the diff or judging the task’s requirements.
Visual Studio Code describes a loop in which an agent reads related code, edits, runs tests, inspects results, and revises before handing the diff and validation results to a person. Its guidance warns, “AI can produce incorrect code or misunderstand your intent.” See Build with AI in VS Code and Review and revert agent changes. Treat a passing check as evidence about what that check exercised, not as a guarantee that the entire change is correct.
5. Decide what happens to the work
Once you have inspected and validated the change, choose an outcome deliberately: request a revision, retain or apply the work, commit or merge it through your normal process, or discard it. In a local workspace, review and validation should come before committing, merging, applying a worktree, or throwing it away. Visual Studio Code’s agent workflow leaves the decision about which changes reach the codebase with the user.
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“Approval” can mean permission for an agent to take an action, approval of a pull request under repository rules, or a person’s decision to retain changes. These are not interchangeable. GitHub’s documentation says a Copilot code review’s approval assessment alone does not count toward merge requirements. Configured Copilot approvals are a separate feature, described as public preview in the documentation available when this article was prepared; new commits after an approval can dismiss that approval. Check the current GitHub Copilot code review documentation and repository settings before relying on a particular merge behavior.
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Give workflow files extra scrutiny
Changes to CI or automation deserve a separate human decision before privileged workflows run. GitHub warns that “GitHub Actions workflows can be privileged and have access to sensitive secrets.” Inspect proposed workflow changes before allowing them to execute on a Copilot branch, and assess what permissions and secrets the workflow can use. See GitHub’s guidance on reviewing Copilot output.
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Choose a review surface that fits the work
Local diffs, editor sessions, and hosted pull requests provide different places to inspect work; none is established as an overall winner by the product documentation. Choose based on where you need to see changes, permissions, validation, and merge controls together.
| Review surface | Useful when | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Local workspace or diff | You want to review changes before creating a pull request. | Changed files, local test results, branch and worktree state, and whether you can revise, apply, commit, or discard the work. OpenAI’s Codex guide says local review before a pull request is possible; see its pull-request review guidance. |
| Editor session | You want to follow edits, tests, and revisions in the development environment. | The diff, validation results, and the behavior you still need to verify. See Visual Studio Code’s AI development overview and agent-change review guidance. |
| Hosted pull request | You want review and checks in the repository’s collaboration and merge workflow. | Repository and branch context, comments and findings, test and check status, conflicts, approval requirements, and sensitive workflow changes. See the Copilot code review documentation. |
These are workflow distinctions, not results from a controlled comparison. Features, rollout, and preview labels can change, so check the current product documentation and your repository’s settings for the controls you plan to use.
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