The intended distinction is between delegating analytical work and allowing the agent to provide the final approval of its own work. Approving all Git commits would remove independent review of changes that include security-sensitive remediation and compatibility modifications across multiple projects.

Human validation of assessment.md is similarly important because the assessment determines the scope and direction of the upgrade. Incorrectly classified dependencies, missed projects, or an incomplete vulnerability analysis can propagate into the implementation plan. Microsoft’s guidance explicitly recommends reviewing the assessment for missing projects, problematic dependencies, and application-specific concerns before proceeding.

Generating the assessment and checking whether a task file exists are appropriate automated activities. An agent can also inspect the plan’s dependency relationships and flag potential ordering problems. Such assistance does not transfer final accountability for accepting the plan.

The wording should not be interpreted as prohibiting automated assessment validation. Agents can run valuable consistency checks; the unsafe delegation is treating those checks as sufficient independent approval of their own conclusions.

Study-guide topics: human oversight, independent validation, and approval boundaries. Reference: Microsoft Learn—Best practices for GitHub Copilot upgrade .

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