Thanks, I have indeed not read the documentation but I'm familiar enough with auto-merge to get an opinion for I have contributed to some projects using it.
It's just that as a reviewer, putting an "approval" on a PR doesn't mean I'm necessarily willing to merge it right now, it means I think this PR is good and ready to be merged blindly *when project is ready*. If I have tons of pending PRs and need some particular order of merge for whatever reason, or need some time before merge to ensure some important testing in between, then it means that such a workflow with auto-merge based on approval would basically prevent me from doing reviews while I'm waiting for builds, because otherwise if I approve then the PR would be merged immediately.
> we have to decide when a PR is "ready" (at the moment one can merge a PR at any time!)
Exactly, committers decide when a PR and the project are ready, and decide of when to merge according to both. Auto-merge requires extra effort and attention to declare that the project is ready; it only cares about the PR without broader scope.
> We do not need to sit there and wait for a PR, check the checks manually and then press the merge button manually
You wait for a PR anyway. Checking the checks and pressing the merge button are IMO important step of project development. It's not because all checks are green that PR is necessarily good to be merged right now.
