Skipping reviews

Turn off automatic reviews

otto.yml

version: 1
reviews:
  enabled: false

Otto stops reviewing new PRs and pushes in this repository automatically. You can still comment /otto review to get a review.

Skip rules

Skip automatic reviews of PRs that match any rule:

otto.yml

version: 1
reviews:
  skip:
    labels: ['no-otto', 'dependencies']
    title_contains: ['[skip otto]', 'WIP']
    base_branches: ['release/*']
    head_branches: ['dependabot/**', 'renovate/**']
    authors: ['renovate[bot]']

Rule	Skips a PR when	Matching
`labels`	It has any of these labels	Exact, case-insensitive
`title_contains`	Its title contains any of these	Substring, case-insensitive
`base_branches`	It targets a branch matching any of these	Glob
`head_branches`	It comes from a branch matching any of these	Glob
`authors`	Its author is any of these (GitHub login or Azure unique name)	Exact, case-insensitive

Otto checks enabled, then the rules in the order above, and reports the first one that matches.

What a skip does

enabled: false and the skip rules apply to automatic reviews: new pull requests, new pushes, and review requests. They never block an explicit /otto review or /otto re-review comment, which runs a full review with the rest of otto.yml. When a skip rule matches, Otto completes the run without reviewing, at no cost:

GitHub: the Otto Review check completes as neutral with “Otto skipped this review” and names the rule that matched, for example skip.labels: no-otto.
Azure Repos: the otto/review status is set to not applicable, and Otto comments on the PR naming the rule. On later pushes it edits that comment instead of adding another.

Because Otto reads otto.yml from the PR’s base commit, a PR can’t skip its own review by editing otto.yml.

Otto Approval check: a skipped review doesn’t satisfy the Otto Approval merge gate. A skipped PR needs a human approval to merge, the same as a PR that’s too large to review automatically.

Skip vs. ignore vs. turning off

You want to…	Use
Never review this repository automatically	`enabled: false`
Skip some PRs entirely (bots, releases, WIP)	`skip`
Review PRs but leave some files out	`ignore`
Stop reviews across the whole workspace	Settings → Reviews → Automatic PR reviews

​Turn off automatic reviews

​Skip rules

​What a skip does

​Skip vs. ignore vs. turning off

Turn off automatic reviews

Skip rules

What a skip does

Skip vs. ignore vs. turning off