How to Close Stale Issues Automatically in GitHub Actions

By Daniel Zoghalchali·Latchkey

A backlog full of abandoned issues hides the live ones; a scheduled stale sweep warns then closes the dead weight.

Run actions/stale on a cron schedule with day thresholds for marking and closing, plus exempt labels for items you never want auto-closed.

Steps

Add a schedule trigger (e.g. daily).
Configure days-before-stale and days-before-close.
Set warning messages for issues and PRs.
Exempt important items with exempt-issue-labels.

Workflow

.github/workflows/stale.yml

name: Stale
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: 14
          stale-issue-message: 'No activity in 60 days; closing in 14 if nothing changes.'
          exempt-issue-labels: 'pinned,security'

Verify it actually works

A workflow that runs is not a workflow that works. Confirm the behaviour on a real event rather than on a manual dispatch, because trigger conditions, permissions, and context values all differ between the two.

Terminal

# 1. validate the file before pushing
docker run --rm -v "$(pwd):/repo" --workdir /repo rhysd/actionlint:latest -color

# 2. trigger the real event, not workflow_dispatch
git commit --allow-empty -m "ci: verify trigger" && git push

# 3. watch it and read the conclusion, not just the colour
gh run watch
gh run view --log-failed

What usually goes wrong first

The workflow file must exist on the default branch before scheduled or dispatch triggers appear at all.
GITHUB_TOKEN permissions default to read-only in many organisations. Declare a permissions: block listing every scope the job needs.
Fork pull requests get a read-only token and no access to secrets, regardless of workflow configuration.
actions/checkout gives you depth 1 on a detached HEAD, so anything needing history or a branch name needs fetch-depth: 0.

Frequently asked questions

How do I close Stale Issues Automatically in GitHub Actions?

Run actions/stale on a cron schedule with day thresholds for marking and closing, plus exempt labels for items you never want auto-closed.

References

GitHub Actions documentation