What a status check actually is
You are about to open a repository to outside contributors.
One question keeps coming up: should a passing build be required before merging a pull request, or is human review approval enough?
The answer shapes how much you can trust what lands on your main branch, and how heavy a gate every contributor faces.
This guide walks through the decision with GitHub's documented behavior in mind.
It covers when protected branches and required checks make sense, what a green check guarantees, and when review approval alone is the lighter gate.
By the end you will have a checklist you can apply to your own branch before the first outside pull request arrives.
A status check shows whether a commit meets the conditions set for a repository.
External systems usually create them: continuous integration builds, tests, code scanning, or deployment checks.
Checks help reviewers and maintainers understand whether a pull request is ready to merge.
A check can show that work is still running, that changes passed validation, or that something needs attention.
GitHub distinguishes two types.
Checks offer detailed output, annotations, and messages, and are created by GitHub Apps, including GitHub Actions.
Commit statuses are a simpler status for a commit, created by external services and integrations.
One practical difference: the Checks tab in a pull request is populated only if you set up checks, not commit statuses.
The richer detail view depends on which type your integrations produce.
If status checks are required for a protected branch, they must pass before the pull request can be merged.
That is the mechanism behind the whole decision: making a check required turns it from information into a gate.
When requiring checks makes sense
GitHub documents protected branches for branches that represent production code, a release line, or another important source of truth.
That is the first question to ask about your branch.
If a merge goes straight to something users depend on, or to a line you cut releases from, the case for a required gate is strong.
The second question is which validations should gate merges.
Inventory what your repository actually runs: builds, tests, code scanning, deployment checks.
A required check only protects the branch if the check itself measures something meaningful about the change.