Issue 353 stale cleanup

[pritkc]

What type of PR is this? (check all applicable)

• Refactor
• Feature
• Bug Fix
• Optimization
• Example
• Documentation

Description

Adds automated inactivity management for open issues, pull requests, and draft pull requests.

The workflow:

• Runs once per day from GitHub Actions.
• Scans open issues, PRs, and draft PRs.
• Ignores workflow bot comments when calculating inactivity.
• Posts a pre-stale reminder after 14 inactive days.
• Adds stale after 28 inactive days and posts a close warning.
• Closes stale items 42 days after the stale warning if there is still no human activity.
• Removes stale when human activity happens after the stale warning.
• Supports a single protection label: keep-open.
• Posts reminder-only comments on keep-open items every 28 inactive days.
• Never marks keep-open items stale and never closes them.
• Adds a keep-open request section to issue and PR templates.

Human activity includes non-bot comments, issue/PR edits, label changes, PR commits, and PR reviews.

Related Issues & Documents

• I have created an Issue that is paired with this PR
• Closes Proposal: Automate stale issue/PR cleanup and improve Project Board hygiene #353

Maintainer Notes

No manual label setup is required for normal operation. On a non-debug run, the workflow creates or updates:

• stale: used by the workflow for items scheduled for automatic closure.
• keep-open: manually applied by maintainers when an issue or PR should stay open despite inactivity.

Maintainers only need to apply keep-open when they want to protect an item from stale handling. If keep-open is applied to an item that already has stale, the next workflow scan removes stale.

After merge, maintainers can run the workflow manually from the Actions tab with debug_only: true to preview behavior without comments, labels, or closures.

GitHub Workflow Test Methodology

The workflow was tested on the fork default branch so workflow_dispatch could run exactly as it will after merge.

Fork setup used for runtime tests:

• Fork repository: https://github.com/pritkc/mole
• Fork workflow: https://github.com/pritkc/mole/actions/workflows/stale.yml
• Fork setup PR putting the workflow on default branch: Test stale cleanup workflow on fork pritkc/mole#4
• Fork setup PR updating to actions/github-script@v9: Update fork stale workflow test to github-script v9 pritkc/mole#5

Runtime workflow runs:

• Label creation and safe dispatch: https://github.com/pritkc/mole/actions/runs/25957990487
• Pre-stale and keep-open reminders: https://github.com/pritkc/mole/actions/runs/25958036424
• Stale label and close warning: https://github.com/pritkc/mole/actions/runs/25958047224
• Human activity removes stale: https://github.com/pritkc/mole/actions/runs/25958059568
• Stale issue close path: https://github.com/pritkc/mole/actions/runs/25958070170
• Draft PR stale path: https://github.com/pritkc/mole/actions/runs/25958106578
• Draft PR close path: https://github.com/pritkc/mole/actions/runs/25958115248

Test artifacts:

• Pre-stale issue: [stale-flow-test] pre-stale reminder pritkc/mole#7
• Stale then close issue: [stale-flow-test] stale then close pritkc/mole#6
• Keep-open reminder issue: [stale-flow-test] keep-open reminder pritkc/mole#8
• Human activity reset issue: [stale-flow-test] human activity reset pritkc/mole#9
• Draft PR lifecycle test: [stale-flow-test] draft PR lifecycle pritkc/mole#10

What was verified:

• Manual workflow dispatch runs successfully from a default branch.
• The workflow creates/updates stale and keep-open.
• Regular issues receive a pre-stale reminder.
• Bot comments do not reset inactivity.
• Regular issues receive stale plus a close warning.
• Stale issues close when the close threshold is reached.
• keep-open issues receive reminder-only comments, are not marked stale, and are not closed.
• Human activity after a stale warning removes stale.
• Draft PRs are scanned, marked stale, and closed with pull-request wording.

Static workflow checks:

• YAML parse check passed for .github/workflows/stale.yml.
• actionlint passed for .github/workflows/stale.yml.
• Embedded actions/github-script JavaScript syntax check passed.
• git diff --check passed.

Added/updated tests?

We encourage you to test all code included with MOLE, including examples.

• Yes
• No, and this is why: please replace this line with details on why tests
  have not been included
• I need help with writing tests

Read Contributing Guide and Code of Conduct

• I have read the MOLE Contributing Guide: https://github.com/csrc-sdsu/mole/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
• I have read the MOLE Code of Conduct: https://github.com/csrc-sdsu/mole/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

Post-merge Task

Run the workflow manually once with debug_only: true to preview the first production scan before allowing the scheduled run to make changes.