Close stale issues and PRs workflow (FairwindsOps/polaris)

The Close stale issues and PRs workflow from FairwindsOps/polaris, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

What it does

This is the Close stale issues and PRs workflow from the FairwindsOps/polaris repository, a real project running GitHub Actions. It is shown here with attribution under its Apache-2.0 license.

Below, Latchkey shows a faster, safer version produced by its optimization engine.

The workflow

name: 'Close stale issues and PRs'
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '32 1 * * *'

permissions:
  issues: write
  pull-requests: write

jobs:
  stale:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/stale@v4
        with:
          exempt-issue-labels: pinned
          stale-pr-label: stale
          stale-issue-label: stale

The same workflow, on Latchkey

Removes redundant runs and caps runaway jobs. Added and changed lines are highlighted.

name: 'Close stale issues and PRs'
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '32 1 * * *'
 
permissions:
  issues: write
  pull-requests: write
 
jobs:
  stale:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - uses: actions/stale@v4
        with:
          exempt-issue-labels: pinned
          stale-pr-label: stale
          stale-issue-label: stale
 

What changed

• Run on Latchkey managed runners with one line (runs-on), which apply the fixes below automatically and self-heal transient failures. This example uses latchkey-small; pick the runner size that fits the job.
• Add a job timeout so a hung step cannot burn hours of runner time.

This workflow runs 1 job per trigger. On Latchkey the same minutes cost up to 58% less than GitHub-hosted, with zero queue time.

Actions used in this workflow