Repo Lockdown is a GitHub Action that immediately closes and locks issues and pull requests. It is mainly used with repositories that do not accept issues or pull requests, such as forks and mirrors.

The continued development of Repo Lockdown is made possible thanks to the support of awesome backers. If you'd like to join them, please consider contributing with Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin.

Create the repo-lockdown.yml workflow file in the .github/workflows directory, use one of the example workflows to get started.

The action can be configured using input parameters.

• github-token
  • GitHub access token, value must be ${{ github.token }} or an encrypted secret that contains a personal access token
  • Optional, defaults to ${{ github.token }}
• exclude-issue-created-before
  • Do not process issues created before a given timestamp, value must follow ISO 8601
  • Optional, defaults to ''
• exclude-issue-labels
  • Do not process issues with any of these labels, value must be a comma separated list of labels
  • Optional, defaults to ''
• issue-labels
  • Labels to add before closing or locking an issue, value must be a comma separated list of labels
  • Optional, defaults to ''
• issue-comment
  • Comment to post before closing or locking an issue
  • Optional, defaults to ''
• skip-closed-issue-comment
  • Do not comment on already closed issues before locking, value must be either true or false
  • Optional, defaults to false
• close-issue
  • Close issues, value must be either true or false
  • Optional, defaults to true
• issue-close-reason
  • Reason for closing an issue, value must be either completed or not planned
  • Optional, defaults to not planned
• lock-issue
  • Lock issues, value must be either true or false
  • Optional, defaults to true
• issue-lock-reason
  • Reason for locking an issue, value must be one of resolved, off-topic, too heated or spam
  • Optional, defaults to ''
• exclude-pr-created-before
  • Do not process pull requests created before a given timestamp, value must follow ISO 8601
  • Optional, defaults to ''
• exclude-pr-labels
  • Do not process pull requests with any of these labels, value must be a comma separated list of labels
  • Optional, defaults to ''
• pr-labels
  • Labels to add before closing or locking a pull request, value must be a comma separated list of labels
  • Optional, defaults to ''
• pr-comment
  • Comment to post before closing or locking a pull request
  • Optional, defaults to ''
• skip-closed-pr-comment
  • Do not comment on already closed pull requests before locking, value must be either true or false
  • Optional, defaults to false
• close-pr
  • Close pull requests, value must be either true or false
  • Optional, defaults to true
• lock-pr
  • Lock pull requests, value must be either true or false
  • Optional, defaults to true
• pr-lock-reason
  • Reason for locking a pull request, value must be one of resolved, off-topic, too heated or spam
  • Optional, defaults to ''
• process-only
  • Process only issues or pull requests, value must be either issues or prs
  • Optional, defaults to ''
• log-output
  • Log output parameters, value must be either true or false
  • Optional, defaults to false

• issues
  • Issues that have been closed or locked, value is a JSON string in the form of [{"owner": "actions", "repo": "toolkit", "issue_number": 1}]
  • Defaults to ''
• prs
  • Pull requests that have been closed or locked, value is a JSON string in the form of [{"owner": "actions", "repo": "toolkit", "issue_number": 1}]
  • Defaults to ''

The following workflow will search once an hour for existing issues and pull requests that can be closed or locked. New issues and pull requests will be immediately processed when they are opened.

name: 'Repo Lockdown'

on:
  issues:
    types: opened
  pull_request_target:
    types: opened
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 * * * *'

permissions:
  issues: write
  pull-requests: write

jobs:
  action:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: dessant/repo-lockdown@v4

Scheduled runs are no longer needed once the initial backlog of issues and pull requests has been processed. It's best to edit the workflow after the backlog has been processed and remove the schedule event to avoid unnecessary workflow runs.

on:
  issues:
    types: opened
  pull_request_target:
    types: opened

This workflow declares all the available input parameters of the action and their default values. Any of the parameters can be omitted.

name: 'Repo Lockdown'

on:
  issues:
    types: opened
  pull_request_target:
    types: opened
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 * * * *'

permissions:
  issues: write
  pull-requests: write

jobs:
  action:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: dessant/repo-lockdown@v4
        with:
          github-token: ${{ github.token }}
          exclude-issue-created-before: ''
          exclude-issue-labels: ''
          issue-labels: ''
          issue-comment: ''
          skip-closed-issue-comment: false
          close-issue: true
          issue-close-reason: 'not planned'
          lock-issue: true
          issue-lock-reason: ''
          exclude-pr-created-before: ''
          exclude-pr-labels: ''
          pr-labels: ''
          pr-comment: ''
          skip-closed-pr-comment: false
          close-pr: true
          lock-pr: true
          pr-lock-reason: ''
          process-only: ''
          log-output: false

This step will close and lock only issues, and exclude issues created before 2018, or those with the pinned or help-wanted labels applied.

    steps:
      - uses: dessant/repo-lockdown@v4
        with:
          exclude-issue-created-before: '2018-01-01T00:00:00Z'
          exclude-issue-labels: 'pinned, help-wanted'
          process-only: 'issues'

This step will close only pull requests, and exclude those with the pinned label applied.

    steps:
      - uses: dessant/repo-lockdown@v4
        with:
          exclude-pr-labels: 'pinned'
          lock-pr: false
          process-only: 'prs'

This step will post a comment on issues and pull requests before closing and locking them, and will apply the off-topic label to issues.

    steps:
      - uses: dessant/repo-lockdown@v4
        with:
          issue-labels: 'off-topic'
          issue-comment: >
            This repository does not accept bug reports,
            see the README for details.
          pr-comment: >
            This repository does not accept pull requests,
            see the README for details.

Informing the participants of issues and pull requests before locking discussions can help redirect contributors to the right place to continue their work, though it may be useful to avoid posting comments on already closed issues and pull requests to reduce notification spam.

This step will post a comment on open issues and pull requests before closing and locking them, and will avoid commenting on threads that have already been closed before locking them.

    steps:
      - uses: dessant/repo-lockdown@v4
        with:
          issue-comment: >
            This repository does not accept bug reports,
            see the README for details.
          skip-closed-issue-comment: true
          pr-comment: >
            This repository does not accept pull requests,
            see the README for details.
          skip-closed-pr-comment: true

The action uses an installation access token by default to interact with GitHub. You may also authenticate with a personal access token to perform actions as a GitHub user instead of the github-actions app.

Create a personal access token with the repo or public_repo scopes enabled, and add the token as an encrypted secret for the repository or organization, then provide the action with the secret using the github-token input parameter.

    steps:
      - uses: dessant/repo-lockdown@v4
        with:
          github-token: ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN }}

To avoid triggering abuse prevention mechanisms on GitHub, only 50 threads will be handled at a time. If your repository has more than that, it will take a few hours or days to process them all.

Copyright (c) 2019-2023 Armin Sebastian

This software is released under the terms of the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for further information.