bug: quality-gate never evaluates PRs — requires APPROVED but Copilot sends COMMENTED

[microsasa]

Bug

The Quality Gate workflow instructions require the triggering Copilot review to have state APPROVED. However, Copilot auto-reviews almost always submit as COMMENTED (when there are inline comments, or on workflow-only PRs). Only zero-concern code-changing PRs get APPROVED.

This means:

• Quality Gate triggers on Copilot review events ✅
• Activation succeeds (thanks to roles: all from PR fix: use roles: all workaround for bot activation (gh-aw#21098) #76) ✅
• Agent starts, reads instructions, checks review state → sees COMMENTED → stops (noop) ❌
• No approval is ever submitted
• Auto-merge stays blocked forever

Root Cause

Quality Gate instructions (step 2):

This workflow should only proceed when:
- The review is an APPROVAL
- The reviewer is copilot-pull-request-reviewer

But Copilot auto-review behavior:

• COMMENTED: When Copilot has inline comments, or on workflow-only PRs (most common)
• APPROVED: Only when Copilot has zero concerns on a code-changing PR (rare)

Impact

The entire autonomous merge pipeline is broken. Agent PRs created by the Issue Implementer have auto-merge: true, but auto-merge requires the Quality Gate's approval to satisfy branch protection. Since Quality Gate never approves, PRs pile up waiting for manual merge.

Observed On

PR #79 — first PR where the full pipeline ran (activation fixed by PR #76). Quality Gate ran to completion but did nothing (noop).

Fix

Accept both COMMENTED and APPROVED reviews from Copilot. The quality evaluation should be based on the PR's code quality and impact, not the review state.

Related Issues

• bug: agent workflows never activate on Copilot review events #75 — Previous activation bug (agent never activated). Fixed by PR fix: use roles: all workaround for bot activation (gh-aw#21098) #76 (roles: all). This is a different bug — agents now activate but the Quality Gate's instructions cause it to noop.
• Autonomous agent pipeline — CI fixer, review responder, quality gate #53 — Original pipeline issue that defined the Quality Gate's behavior