Feature request: Limit Codex auto code review to default branch (or configurable branch allowlist) #13597

What variant of Codex are you using?

Codex GitHub code review

What feature would you like to see?

Feature request: Limit Codex auto code review to default branch (or configurable branch allowlist)

Summary

Codex code review currently triggers on all pull requests. For teams with a multi-branch promotion/release flow, this creates noise and consumes review quota on PRs that don’t benefit from automated review.

The problem

In many repos, not every PR is a “code change PR” that should be reviewed. A common pattern is promotion PRs between long-lived branches (e.g., default → staging → production). These are often merge/promote operations and are not the right place to spend Codex review budget.

Our workflow (example)

1. PR main (default) → staging for smoke testing
2. PR staging → production for deployment promotion

Codex runs on both of these PRs today, which:

• consumes review quota/credits unnecessarily,
• adds notification noise,
• reduces signal (reviews show up where humans don’t need them),
• makes it harder to reserve Codex reviews for “feature → main” PRs.

Requested behavior

Add a repo/org setting (or workflow config) to control which PRs trigger Codex auto-review.

Preferred options:

• Option A (simple, high value): Only run auto-review when the PR base branch is the repository default branch.
• Option B (flexible): Configure an allowlist/denylist of base branches (e.g., allow main only; deny staging, production; or allow patterns like release/*).

Nice-to-have controls

Any of the following would also work well:

• Only run when a label is present, e.g. codex-review
• Skip when a label is present, e.g. no-codex
• Only run on non-merge commits / skip PRs that are “promotion-only” (if that’s detectable)
• Support for skipping reviews on PRs authored by automation/bots (optional)

Why this matters

• Improves signal-to-noise for reviewers
• Prevents quota exhaustion on routine promotion PRs
• Matches common branching/release strategies (default → staging → production)
• Lets teams adopt Codex reviews without having to redesign their release flow

Acceptance criteria (suggested)

• A setting exists to restrict auto-review to PRs targeting the default branch or a configured branch/pattern allowlist
• Behavior is consistent across repos in an org (if configured at org-level)
• Existing users can keep current behavior (backwards compatible default)

Thanks — happy to provide examples/logs if needed.

Additional information

As a reference, taking 2 repo PRs to branch:release/ used the remaining 75% of my plan's utilization.