Automate Your GitHub Workflow: Build an Open-Source Stale PR Bot in Go

Maintaining a healthy codebase means keeping pull requests (PRs) up-to-date and ensuring inactive contributions don’t clutter your repository. In this post, we dive into building a Stale PR Bot using Go — a tool that monitors open pull requests, sends friendly warning emails to authors, and eventually closes those that remain inactive. Let’s explore how this bot can streamline your repository management!

Stale PR Bot

Introduction

Every project faces the challenge of managing PRs that have gone cold. Unattended pull requests can slow down project momentum, confuse contributors, and clutter the issue tracker. By automating the process, you can:

• Ensure timely updates: Remind contributors when their PRs become inactive.
• Maintain clarity: Automatically close PRs that have been dormant past a warning period.
• Improve communication: Send clear notifications to contributors about the status of their submissions.

This bot, developed in Go, interacts directly with the GitHub API to fetch open PRs, determine their activity status, and communicate with developers via email — helping you maintain a robust workflow with minimal manual intervention.

Here is the code base to the bot: