Attention Rules

GitHub Monitor does not list everything that is open: it reports what is waiting for you. This page describes exactly how each repository is queried and which items count as pending.

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What Needs Attention

• Every open pull request.
• Every open issue whose last comment (or its author, if it has no comments) does not come from someone in maintainers.

An issue stops being reported as soon as a maintainer replies, and comes back if someone else comments after that.

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The Attention Rule

The rule is a pure function in github.py:

def needs_attention(last_author: str | None, maintainers: frozenset[str]) -> bool:
    return last_author is None or last_author.lower() not in maintainers

last_author is the login of the issue's last comment or, when there are no comments, of the issue author. GitHub reports a deleted account ("ghost") as a null author, which is represented by None and always needs attention.

Last activity on the issue	Pending?
Opened by an outsider, no comments	Yes
Last comment by an outsider	Yes
Last comment by a maintainer	No
Opened by a maintainer, no comments	No
Last author is a deleted user	Yes

Note

Bots count as outsiders. If a bot's comments should mark an issue as answered, add its login to maintainers.

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GitHub GraphQL Queries

Each repository is queried with two paginated connections, both with states: OPEN, first: 100 and an after cursor.

=== "Pull requests"

```graphql
query($owner: String!, $name: String!, $after: String) {
  repository(owner: $owner, name: $name) {
    pullRequests(states: OPEN, first: 100, after: $after) {
      pageInfo { hasNextPage endCursor }
      nodes { number title url }
    }
  }
}
```

=== "Issues"

```graphql
query($owner: String!, $name: String!, $after: String) {
  repository(owner: $owner, name: $name) {
    issues(states: OPEN, first: 100, after: $after) {
      pageInfo { hasNextPage endCursor }
      nodes {
        number title url
        author { login }
        comments(last: 1) { nodes { author { login } } }
      }
    }
  }
}
```

Why GraphQL

• comments(last: 1) returns the last comment of every issue in the same request. REST can only do that with one request per issue.
• The GraphQL issues connection excludes pull requests, so no filtering is needed.
• A repository with fewer than 100 open pull requests and 100 open issues costs two requests per poll, which keeps usage far below the 5000 points/hour rate limit.

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Pagination & Errors

fetch_nodes loops over pages until hasNextPage is false, following endCursor. Each request uses a 30-second timeout and an Authorization: Bearer <token> header set once on the shared requests.Session.

A failure is raised, not hidden:

• response.raise_for_status() for HTTP errors (bad token, network failures, rate limiting).
• GitHubError carrying the first message when the payload contains errors (for example, an unknown repository).

fetch_all turns these into a RepoStatus with error set; see Architecture & Design.