ADO Pilot skips some pull requests and some files inside otherwise-reviewable PRs. Knowing which is which helps you understand why a PR did not get a review, why the comment looks empty, and when a `PASS` does not actually mean "we looked at everything." ## What gets skipped, at a glance | Boundary | Behavior | Charged review credits? | | -------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- | | Binary files (images, archives, compiled output) | Filtered before review. Never sent to the model. | No. | | Files matching exclusion patterns | Filtered before review. Same effect as binaries. | No. | | PR with every changed file excluded | Posts a succeeded `ai-pr-review` status check noting all files were excluded. No inline comment. | No. | | Target branch does not match `targetBranchFilters` | Webhook fires but ADO Pilot skips the review. | No. | | PR is closed, merged, or abandoned | New reviews are rejected. | No. | | Tenant suspended or cancelled | Webhooks accepted (ADO does not retry); events dropped, not stored. New reviews rejected. In-flight reviews finish normally. | No, except for in-flight reviews that already reserved quota. | | `enabled: false` at org, project, or repo | Webhook fires but ADO Pilot skips the review. | No. | The rest of this page expands each row with the practical detail. ## Large PRs ADO Pilot reviews large PRs in full. There is no line-count cap that causes files to be skipped. Review quality may vary for extremely large changesets — the model has a finite context window and a very large diff competes with it — but the review attempts to cover every reviewable file. If a PR diff cannot be processed at all (for example, due to a transient provider error or an unrecoverable internal failure), the review will fail with an error status check rather than silently returning a partial result. See [No findings posted on a large PR](../troubleshooting/large-pr-no-findings.md) for troubleshooting steps when a large PR produces fewer findings than expected. Workarounds for very large PRs: split the PR into smaller change sets, or add bulk-changed paths (lockfiles, generated code, vendored dependencies) to your exclusions so they are stripped before the model sees the diff. ## Binaries and irreviewable formats Binary diffs do not contain text the reviewer can analyze, so they are filtered before review: - Images: `.png`, `.jpg`, `.jpeg`, `.gif`, `.webp`, `.svg`, `.ico` - Archives: `.zip`, `.tar`, `.gz`, `.7z`, `.rar` - Compiled artifacts: `.exe`, `.dll`, `.so`, `.o`, `.a`, `.lib`, `.wasm` - Media: `.mp3`, `.mp4`, `.wav`, `.mov`, `.avi` - Documents: `.pdf`, `.docx`, `.xlsx`, `.pptx` These are silently skipped. They do not consume review credits and they do not appear in the finding count. ## Excluded files You can add your own glob patterns at three levels — org, project, or repo — under **Repositories**. Patterns merge across levels (the more specific scope adds to the less specific scope; nothing is overridden away). ADO Pilot starts with an empty exclusion list for every new repo — no glob patterns are applied by default. Add patterns under **Repositories** for any files you want to exclude (for example, lockfiles, generated code, or vendored directories). Glob syntax supports `**` (matches across path segments, including `/`), `*` (matches anything within a single segment), and `?` (matches exactly one character). Character classes (`[abc]`) and brace expansion (`{a,b}`) are not supported. A PR where _every_ changed file matches an exclusion pattern is a special case. ADO Pilot still marks the `ai-pr-review` status check as passed — so a required-branch-policy gate unblocks — with a description noting that all files were excluded. No inline comment is posted, and no review credits are consumed. This is intentional — there is nothing to review, and treating an all-excluded PR as a failure would be misleading. ## Target branch filtering Each repo can specify which target branches should trigger reviews using glob patterns — for example, `["main", "release/*"]`. PRs whose target branch does not match are skipped: - The webhook still arrives at our backend. - ADO Pilot records that the event was received and then drops it. - No review runs, no comment posts, no review credits are charged. Use this to keep draft branches and exploratory feature-branch chains out of the review flow. ## PR lifecycle states Reviews only run on open PRs. If a PR is merged, abandoned (closed without merging in Azure DevOps terminology), or otherwise closed: - The `git.pullrequest.updated` webhook is still received. - ADO Pilot detects the closed state and rejects the review. - A push to a closed PR is also rejected. To get a review on a closed PR, reopen it first. See [Re-running a review](re-running-a-review.md) for the manual trigger options. ## Tenant state — suspended or cancelled If your ADO Pilot subscription is in a suspended or cancelled state — for example, a billing failure or an admin-initiated cancellation — new reviews stop: - Webhooks are still accepted (ADO receives a 200 so it does not retry or disable the subscription), but the events are dropped — they are not queued for replay. - New reviews are rejected while the tenant is suspended. - Reviews that had already reserved review credits before suspension finish normally — ADO Pilot does not abandon work the customer has already paid for. - No review credits are consumed for the new, rejected webhooks. The admin portal and the [Overage behavior](../billing/overage-behavior.md) page show the suspension state and the steps to restore it. ## Disabled at any scope The `enabled` setting can be flipped off at the org, project, or repo level. Any `enabled: false` in the hierarchy gates all reviews underneath it — a disabled org disables every project and repo in that org, and a more-specific scope cannot re-enable what a broader scope has disabled. A repo with `enabled: false` produces no reviews even if the org and project are enabled. ## What never gets flagged inside a reviewed file A few categories of finding are intentionally suppressed even when the file is in scope: - Pre-existing issues in unchanged lines. ADO Pilot reviews the diff, not the whole file. - Mechanical formatting (indentation, brace placement, line length). - Issues a linter already catches, unless they signal a real bug. - Subjective preferences when both forms are correct (`const` vs `let`, early-return vs nested). - Performance concerns in test fixtures and cold administrative paths. - TODOs and FIXMEs the author already left as comments. See [Severities and categories](severities-and-categories.md) for the positive scope — what _does_ get flagged.