Gh Stale Issues

Stale Issues

Triage open issues by age and activity. Groups into buckets with a suggested action per issue. Useful before a release, after a period of heavy development, or when the issue list has drifted into noise.

Triggered by: /gh-stale-issues, "stale issues", "triage issues", "clean up issues", "issue cleanup".

Requires gh CLI authenticated.

Steps

1. Fetch open issues

gh issue list --state open --limit 200 --json number,title,createdAt,updatedAt,labels,assignees,comments,author

If the repo has 200+ open issues, note the cap and ask whether to paginate.

2. Classify by activity

For each issue, compute:

• Age — days since createdAt
• Inactivity — days since updatedAt (last event: comment, label, assignment, etc.)
• Author response — did the issue author comment after the initial post? (approximated by checking if author appears in later comments)

3. Group into buckets

No activity (90+ days): Issues nobody has touched in 3 months. Likely abandoned or superseded. Suggest: close with a "stale — closing for inactivity, reopen if still relevant" comment, or label wontfix.

No author response (30+ days): Issues that received a response (question, request for repro, etc.) but the original author hasn't replied. Suggest: ping author or close with "closing for no response."

Needs labels: Issues with no labels at all. Hard to search, sort, or prioritize unlabeled issues. Suggest: add at least one label (bug, enhancement, question, etc.).

Needs triage: Issues labeled triage or with no assignee and no label. Suggest: assign, label, or move to a milestone.

Healthy: Everything else — labeled, assigned, recently active. Don't clutter the output with these.

4. Output

  No activity — 90+ days (3)
  ┌──────┬──────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
  │ #    │ Title                                │ Last active  │ Suggested action             │
  ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
  │ #22  │ Dark mode flicker on load            │ 112 days ago │ Close as stale               │
  │ #18  │ Export to PDF                        │ 98 days ago  │ Close as wontfix or backlog  │
  │ #11  │ Add keyboard shortcuts               │ 91 days ago  │ Label + milestone or close   │
  └──────┴──────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘

  No author response — 30+ days (1)
  ┌──────┬──────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
  │ #    │ Title                                │ Waiting      │ Suggested action             │
  ├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
  │ #31  │ Login fails on Safari 16             │ 34 days      │ Close — no response          │
  └──────┴──────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘

  Needs labels (2)
  #27 — "Button hover state wrong color" → suggest: bug
  #33 — "Can I add custom domains?" → suggest: question

Skip empty buckets. Don't show the Healthy bucket unless asked.

5. Provide runnable commands

After the table, offer a block of gh commands the user can run to execute the suggestions:

# Close stale issues
gh issue close 22 --comment "Closing as stale — no activity in 90+ days. Reopen if this is still relevant."
gh issue close 18 --comment "Closing as wontfix for now — feel free to reopen with more detail."

# Add labels
gh issue edit 27 --add-label bug
gh issue edit 33 --add-label question

These are suggestions — the user runs them manually. This skill takes no actions.

Judgment Calls

• Large issue backlog (50+)? Still show all candidates, but group into collapsible-style sections. Don't hide issues silently.
• Repo uses a bot for stale issues? Note it and still run — manual triage catches what bots miss.
• Issue has a recent comment but old updatedAt? Trust the most recent comment date over updatedAt if there's a discrepancy.
• Thresholds: 90 days for "no activity," 30 days for "no author response." Adjust in the prompt if your project has a different cadence.
• This skill is read-only. It fetches data and suggests commands. It never closes issues, adds labels, or modifies anything.