actions/stale

Automatically mark and close stale issues and pull requests.

Official actionCategory: Pull Request AutomationLatest v9View on GitHub

What it does

actions/stale runs on a schedule, adds a stale label and comment to issues/PRs with no recent activity, and closes them if they stay inactive.

It has a per-run operations budget so a large backlog is processed over several runs.

Usage

workflow (.yml)

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 1 * * *'
permissions:
  issues: write
  pull-requests: write
jobs:
  stale:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/stale@v9
        with:
          days-before-stale: 60
          days-before-close: 7

Inputs

Input	Description	Default	Required
`days-before-stale`	Days of inactivity before marking stale.	`60`	No
`days-before-close`	Days after stale before closing.	`7`	No
`stale-issue-label`	Label applied when stale.	`Stale`	No
`exempt-issue-labels`	Labels that exempt an issue.	-	No
`operations-per-run`	API operation budget per run.	`30`	No

Notes

Runs best on a schedule. Needs issues: write and pull-requests: write.

Common errors

Only a few items processed per run is expected; raise operations-per-run or let it catch up over days.

Security and pinning

Grant only issues/pull-requests write. Pin the action SHA.

Alternatives and related

actions/labelerAutomatically label pull requests based on the files they change.

Frequently asked questions

Why does stale only touch a few issues per run?

It has an operations-per-run budget (default 30) to stay within API limits. It processes the rest on subsequent scheduled runs.

References

GitHub Actions documentation