add stale workflow

[craig-osterhout]

Description

This PR adds a GitHub Actions workflow to automatically mark and close stale issues and PRs, helping maintainers focus on active items. The old app/bot stopped working around mid 2025 and was disabled. This reimplements it using a GitHub Action with additional slash command functionality.

Timeframes

• Mark as stale: After 180 days (6 months) of inactivity
• Close stale issues: After 14 additional days of no activity
• Close stale PRs: After 30 additional days of no activity

Exempt Labels

Issues and PRs with any of these labels will never be marked as stale:

• kind/help-wanted
• status/need-more-info
• status/needs-analysis
• lifecycle/frozen

How to Keep Issues/PRs Active

To prevent an issue or PR from being marked as stale or closed:

Anyone can:

1. Add a comment - any comment resets the inactivity timer
2. Use /lifecycle active - removes the stale label via slash command

Maintainers can also:
3. Use /lifecycle frozen - prevents the issue/PR from ever being marked stale
4. Add exempt labels - manually apply one of the labels listed above
5. Make any update - editing the description, adding labels, or any activity resets the timer

Slash Commands

The workflow supports these lifecycle commands (comment them on any issue/PR):

Command	Access	Description
/lifecycle active	Anyone	Removes the stale label
/lifecycle frozen	Write access required	Prevents stale marking
/lifecycle stale	Write access required	Manually marks as stale
/remove-lifecycle frozen	Write access required	Removes frozen label
/remove-lifecycle stale	Anyone	Removes stale label

Commands respond with a 👍 reaction when successful, 👎 when permission is denied.

Messages

When marked as stale, issues and PRs receive a friendly comment explaining:

• The situation and timeline for closure (14-30 days)
• How to remove the stale label using /lifecycle active
• How maintainers can freeze with /lifecycle frozen

Debug Mode

The workflow is currently set to debug mode for both components:

Stale action (debug-only: true):

• ✅ Runs and logs what actions it would take
• ❌ No actual changes will be made (no labels, comments, or closures)

Lifecycle commands (DEBUG_ONLY: 'true'):

• ✅ Logs what would happen when slash commands are used
• ❌ No labels added, removed, or permission checks enforced

Related issues

• CI: prevent stale-bot from closing "help-wanted" tickets (or tickets attached to projects) #19050

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[craig-osterhout]

/review

[docker-agent]

Assessment: 🟢 APPROVE

This workflow configuration looks good. The debug mode is intentionally enabled as documented in the PR description, which is a safe approach for initial deployment.

One minor consideration for future optimization: the operations-per-run: 30 limit processes up to 30 items per day. If the repository accumulates many stale issues/PRs, you may want to increase this value (e.g., 100-300) to ensure timely processing. The current value is the recommended default and should work fine for most cases.

[docker-agent]

Assessment: 🟡 NEEDS ATTENTION

Found 1 issue that should be addressed to improve maintainability.

[craig-osterhout]

Will merge at the start of next week to prevent any issues happening over the weekend.
Keeping it on debug until we get the go-ahead after manually triaging current issues.
https://docker.slack.com/archives/C039ZM6GH4Z/p1776185837631829?thread_ts=1776161489.708809&cid=C039ZM6GH4Z