probot/staleArchived
Stale
Stale is a GitHub App and Probot-based automation bot that manages issue tracker lifecycles by identifying, warning, and closing abandoned issues and pull requests based on configurable periods of inactivity. It functions as a maintenance utility for open-source project trackers, running periodic background jobs to scan repositories and enforce cleanup rules without manual user intervention.
The application customizes abandonment criteria through repository-stored configuration files that define numeric thresholds, specific search qualifiers, exemption tags, and automated warning messages. It tracks updates such as comments, label changes, milestones, and commits using structured search queries against platform APIs.
To maintain platform stability, the tool executes scheduled cron scans and processes updates in controlled hourly batches, preventing rate limits and abuse detection mechanisms from triggering. It manages necessary repository permissions and listens to asynchronous webhook events to securely interact with project resources.
Features
- GitHub Issue Management - Automatically scans repositories on a scheduled timetable to identify, mark, and close abandoned issues and pull requests.
- Platform Search Queries - Executes structured platform search queries with custom qualifiers to precisely identify inactive issues and pull requests.
- GitHub App Frameworks - Implements a Probot-based application framework for automating repository management tasks through webhooks and APIs.
- Issue Trackers - Cleans up software project issue trackers by pruning abandoned tickets and pull requests.
- Workflow Schedulers - Runs scheduled background tasks on code repositories to process items in controlled batches.
- Cron Job Automation - Triggers periodic background cron scans to automatically evaluate repositories without manual intervention.
- Event-Driven Webhooks - Listens to asynchronous platform webhooks to trigger automated repository scans and issue lifecycle tasks.
- Automated Warning Messages - Customizes abandonment criteria using configuration files that control exemption tags and automated warning messages.
- Open Source Software - Cleans up open-source software project trackers by automatically handling stale tickets.
- Inactivity Threshold Rules - Defines custom inactivity thresholds and search qualifiers to track updates on comments, labels, and commits.
