GitHub Issues gets a throttle for autonomous agents — approvals, confidence scores, a reason for every action

GitHub put agent automation controls for Issues into public preview on 23 July 2026. Agents can now propose changes instead of applying them, every action carries a high, medium or low confidence rating plus a recorded rationale, and repository administrators set the confidence threshold deciding what applies automatically and what waits for review. A search filter surfaces the queue of pending suggestions. It works with GitHub Agentic Workflows and the Copilot cloud agent over both REST and GraphQL, covering labels, fields, type, close and assignees at launch.

What it means A confidence threshold you can dial is the first practical answer to "how much do I let the agent just do?" — the same shape VS Code shipped for tool calls a week earlier.