stale

The stale workflow runs every day at 01:30 UTC. It marks issues and PRs inactive after a configurable period, then closes them if no activity follows.

By default anything actively tracked is protected: issues and PRs assigned to a milestone or project, and issues labelled in-progress or wip, are never marked stale.

Enabling

Add "stale" to workflows in holocron.config.ts:

workflows: ["stale"],

With overrides:

workflows: [
  {
    name: "stale",
    with: {
      "days-before-stale": 60,
      "days-before-close": 14,
      "exempt-issue-labels": "in-progress,wip,blocked",
    },
  },
],

Inputs

Thresholds

Input	Default	Description
days-before-stale	30	Days of inactivity before an issue or PR is marked stale. Applies to both unless a type-specific value is set.
days-before-close	5	Days after the stale label is applied before the item is closed. Applies to both unless a type-specific value is set.
days-before-issue-stale	-1	Issue-specific stale threshold. -1 inherits from days-before-stale.
days-before-issue-close	-1	Issue-specific close threshold. -1 inherits from days-before-close.
days-before-pr-stale	-1	PR-specific stale threshold. -1 inherits from days-before-stale.
days-before-pr-close	-1	PR-specific close threshold. -1 inherits from days-before-close.

Issue exemptions

Input	Default	Description
exempt-issue-labels	"in-progress,wip"	Comma-separated labels. Issues carrying any of these are never marked stale.
exempt-all-issue-milestones	true	Issues assigned to any milestone are never marked stale.
exempt-all-issue-projects	true	Issues assigned to any project board are never marked stale.

PR exemptions

Input	Default	Description
exempt-pr-labels	""	Comma-separated labels. PRs carrying any of these are never marked stale. Empty by default.
exempt-all-pr-milestones	true	PRs assigned to any milestone are never marked stale.
exempt-all-pr-projects	true	PRs assigned to any project board are never marked stale.

Examples

Issues go stale slower than PRs:

with: {
  "days-before-stale": 30,       // PR default
  "days-before-issue-stale": 90, // issues get more runway
  "days-before-close": 7,
}

Extended thresholds with extra exempt labels:

with: {
  "days-before-stale": 60,
  "days-before-close": 14,
  "exempt-issue-labels": "in-progress,wip,blocked,needs-review",
}

Turn off project exemption for PRs (rare — project membership alone shouldn’t keep PRs open):

with: {
  "exempt-all-pr-projects": false,
}

What is not configurable

Value	Why
Cron schedule (30 1 * * *)	Daily frequency is appropriate for all repos.
stale-issue-label / stale-pr-label	Hardcoded to wontfix — org convention.
Stale and close messages	Consistent wording across the org; derived from the threshold inputs.