Stale PRs / MRs¶

Goal: hourly during business hours, ping authors and reviewers of pull requests that haven't moved in 5+ days.

Stale-PR digest with recommendations header

The same digest delivered to Telegram and Slack:

Stale-PR digest in Telegram

Stale-PR digest in Slack

GitHub flavour¶

- tracker: github
  tags: stale-prs
  filter: "is:open is:pr org:bigcorp review:required updated:<2026-05-01"
  notify:
    subject: "Stale PRs waiting on review"
    followup: "Bump or close. Reviews older than 5 days hurt cycle time."
    mailTo: reporter   # PR author
    cc: ""
    columns: [Type, Status, Updated, Labels]

is:pr (vs is:issue) narrows to pull requests only. review:required filters to PRs that have requested reviews. updated:<DATE is a rolling window — set it from your CI / cron template or just bump the date weekly.

GitLab flavour¶

GitLab MRs are not yet supported as a separate rule type — see the GitLab tracker page for the deferred-feature note. Use a tracker-specific Slack alert via GitLab's native automations for now, or wait for the MR rule type.

Shortcut flavour (PR-equivalent: stories awaiting review)¶

- tracker: shortcut
  tags: stale-prs
  filter: "state:\"Ready for Review\" updated:<-5d !is:archived"
  notify:
    subject: "Stories awaiting review"
    mailTo: reporter
    columns: [Type, Status, Updated]

updated:<-5d is Shortcut's "older than 5 days ago" shorthand.

Linear flavour¶

Linear treats PRs as linked from the GitHub side, not first-class. The Linear-side digest is "issues that should be closed because their PR has merged but the issue is still Done":

- tracker: linear
  tags: stale-prs
  filterRaw:
    state:
      type:
        eq: completed
    completedAt:
      gte: P-7D
  notify:
    subject: "Recently completed Linear issues — verify scope"
    mailTo: assignee

Schedule¶

0 9-17 * * 1-5  /usr/bin/dotnet /opt/preesta/Preesta.dll stale-prs

Tuning¶

Too aggressive? Move from hourly to twice-daily (0 10,15) — most teams don't need hourly poking on stale PRs.
Want a Slack reaction instead of email? Add the slackUsers: map and pick a quieter delivery cadence — Slack DMs feel more urgent than email.