A GitHub Action that automatically marks and closes stale issues and pull requests based on inactivity.
actions/stale is a GitHub Action that automates the process of identifying and closing inactive issues and pull requests in a repository. It helps maintainers reduce clutter by warning about stale items and closing them after a configurable period, ensuring that only active discussions remain open. The action is highly customizable, allowing fine-grained control over which items are targeted and how they are handled.
Open-source maintainers, project managers, and development teams using GitHub who need to automate repository hygiene and keep issue trackers manageable.
Developers choose this action because it is an official GitHub Action with extensive configuration options, robust state management, and a focus on safety features like dry-run mode. It directly integrates into GitHub workflows, requires minimal setup, and is trusted by thousands of repositories for automated maintenance.
Marks issues and pull requests that have not had recent interaction
Open-Awesome is built by the community, for the community. Submit a project, suggest an awesome list, or help improve the catalog on GitHub.
Offers over 50 configurable inputs like days-before-stale, exempt-labels, and per-item overrides, allowing precise control over stale behavior as detailed in the README's options table.
Uses GitHub Actions cache to resume from interrupted runs, ensuring no items are missed even if the workflow stops mid-execution, as mentioned in the Statefulness section.
Includes dry-run mode and debug-only options to test configurations safely without affecting the repository, highlighted in the Debugging section.
Maintained by GitHub as an official action, ensuring reliability, regular updates, and compatibility with GitHub's ecosystem, as indicated by the project's origin and active workflows.
With a vast array of options and numerous override parameters (e.g., separate settings for issues and PRs), initial setup can be daunting and error-prone for new users.
Requires careful tuning of operations-per-run to avoid hitting GitHub API rate limits, which adds overhead and potential for incomplete runs if misconfigured, as warned in the README.
Major version updates like V10 introduce breaking changes such as Node version upgrades, requiring users to update their runners and potentially disrupting workflows, as noted in the breaking changes section.