GitHub for Visual Studio 2.5.5 introduces support for checks and statuses in pull requests, enhancing the pull request workflow by providing crucial information needed for reviewing and merging. This new functionality allows each commit to display a status of pending, passing, or failing based on continuous integration builds or deployment services, with the status of the latest commit visible in the pull request list view. The detail view includes a section for "Checks," where users can expand to see individual checks and their statuses, and clicking on "Details" opens a URL with more information and logs. Users are encouraged to provide feedback, report bugs, and contribute to the extension, with opportunities to participate in usability studies by filling out a survey.