External Pr Viability

External PR Viability

Use this before writing a single line of code for an unsolicited PR against a repository you do not already have merged standing in.

The problem

A correct, fully-tested, contribution-guideline-compliant PR can be closed within seconds, with zero review and zero comment, even though CI passed. That is not a code-quality signal — a genuine quality rejection leaves a comment or a "changes requested" review, because the point of a comment is to get the author to fix something. A silent, near-instant close with passing checks means the PR was never evaluated on its merits: it was closed because of who opened it, not what was in it. No amount of correctness, test coverage, or contribution-guideline compliance changes that outcome, and reattempting on the same repo (a different issue, a rewritten description) wastes the same amount of effort again.

Confirmed directly: a PR fixing a real, independently-verified one-line bug — with a red/green-tested regression test, a linked issue, a filled-in contribution template, and the required changelog entry — was closed by a core-team member 34 seconds after the final push. Checking the last 100 merged PRs on that repository showed every single author was either a core-team member or the dependency-update bot: zero outside contributors merged, ever, in that window. Other recent external PRs from unrelated contributors had received the identical silent treatment.

Rule

Before implementing a fix for an unsolicited external PR, run this check:

1. gh pr list --repo <owner>/<repo> --state merged --limit 100 --json author,authorAssociation — collect the unique author logins together with GitHub's own authorAssociation for each (MEMBER/OWNER/COLLABORATOR vs CONTRIBUTOR/FIRST_TIME_CONTRIBUTOR/NONE). Treat authorAssociation as the primary signal — it comes from GitHub's own view of the relationship, not an inference.
2. Only when authorAssociation doesn't resolve a login clearly, cross-check org membership: gh api orgs/<org>/members/<login> (204 = member, 404 = not a member) — or use employer/bio signals when the repo isn't org-owned. Treat that call's own result with caution: GET /orgs/{org}/members/{username} only reports a private membership correctly when the caller is themselves an org member. Called from outside — which this skill always is — a privately-set member reads back as 404 and gets miscounted as external, biasing the whole check toward the wrong, unsafe conclusion (a real core-team repo reading as a healthy mix). Never let this call override a MEMBER/OWNER authorAssociation from step 1.
3. Count how many distinct people among those authors are genuinely external (not a member/owner/collaborator, not a bot) — not how many external-authored PRs there are. Note separately whether those merges are spread across many different people or concentrated in one or two: a dozen merged PRs from one long-time contributor who behaves like an unofficial team member is a different, weaker signal than a dozen merged PRs from a dozen different first-time contributors.

Decision, checked in this order:

• Fewer than ~20 total merged PRs exist to sample — inconclusive regardless of the distinct-author count. State the small sample size and proceed with lower confidence rather than disqualifying; this check needs history to mean anything.
• Zero distinct external authors, or fewer than 5 — disqualify the repo, even if the raw external-authored PR count is higher than that (concentration in one or two people is still a near-zero signal, not a healthy one). Do not implement, do not open a PR. Record the finding with its evidence (author list, counts) so a later scouting pass doesn't repeat the mistake.
• 5 to 15 distinct external authors — a genuine middle band. Proceed, but note the lower confidence explicitly rather than treating it the same as a clearly healthy repo.
• 16 or more distinct external authors, spread across different people rather than dominated by one repeat contributor — proceed normally.

Also check CONTRIBUTING.md / the README for an explicit stated policy against external or AI-assisted contributions. An explicit policy disqualifies immediately regardless of merge-rate and doesn't need the count.

One instant, uncommented close on its own is not proof of a repo-wide policy — a single PR can be legitimately superseded by a competing PR, already fixed, or closed by an automated duplicate-detector (which typically does leave a comment naming what it duplicates). Only escalate to a full repo disqualification after confirming the pattern via the merge-count check, never from one incident alone.

Distinguish from external-pr-style

This check answers "will this repo merge an outside PR at all," before any code is written. external-pr-style (write natural prose, avoid AI-tell headers) answers "how do I write the PR so a maintainer who does evaluate outside PRs on their merits doesn't reject it for style." Running the style skill correctly cannot fix a repo that has already failed this check — they solve different failure modes, checked in this order: viability first, then style.

Record the finding

When a repo fails this check, write down what you found — the last-100-merged author list, the external-merge count, and the specific incident if one triggered the check — wherever your scouting or tracking system keeps a disqualified-repo list, so a later scouting pass doesn't rediscover the same repo the expensive way.

Guardrails

• Never disqualify a repo from a single closed PR alone — confirm the pattern via the merge-count check first.
• Never fabricate the merge-count evidence — the decision must cite an actual command's real output, not an assumption or a guess made to move faster.
• Don't confuse a CLA/DCO requirement (a process gate, satisfiable by any contributor) with an external-merge policy (a categorical exclusion). CLA-gated repos can still be fully viable once the CLA is signed — check the actual merged-author mix, not just the presence of a CLA bot.