fix: don't auto-approve PRs that change the bot's own guardrails - #758
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Add a check that skips auto-approval when a PR modifies .github/** or .shadow.yml. Without it, a PR that weakens the approval gate (or repoints the bot at a different engine) is approved by the very gate it edits. Paginates listFiles so a large PR cannot slip a guarded file past a 30-item page.
![github-actions[bot]](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/in/15368?s=60&v=4){kind=small}
sudsali
marked this pull request as ready for review
July 6, 2026 19:39
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Summary
Hardens
auto-approve.ymlso the bot never auto-approves a PR that modifies its own guardrails.The gap
auto-approve.ymlapproves any PR where the bot posted a clean review + CI passed. It has no check on what the PR changes — so a PR that editsauto-approve.ymlitself (weakening the gate), or.shadow.yml/ a workflow (e.g. repointing the bot at a different engine SHA), gets auto-approved by the very gate it modifies. GitHub branch protection still requires a human to merge, but auto-approval of self-modifying PRs shouldn't happen.The fix
A "Condition 0" check runs before the CI/marker conditions: it lists the PR's changed files (paginated, so a large PR can't slip a guarded file past a single page) and skips auto-approval if any path is under
.github/or is.shadow.yml. Those PRs require a human approval. Normal source/test PRs are unaffected.Rollback
Revert this PR — the Condition 0 block is removed and behavior returns to CI + clean-marker only.
By submitting this pull request, I confirm that my contribution is made under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license.