ClawSweeper Issue Triage Bot

---
name: clawsweeper-issue-triage
description: ClawSweeper is a conservative GitHub maintainer bot that scans all open issues and PRs, writes per-item markdown review records, and closes only when evidence meets strict criteria.
triggers:
  - set up clawsweeper for my repo
  - automate issue triage with clawsweeper
  - how do I run clawsweeper locally
  - configure clawsweeper to close stale issues
  - apply clawsweeper closures to my repository
  - review open PRs with clawsweeper
  - clawsweeper dashboard not updating
  - how does clawsweeper decide what to close
---

# ClawSweeper Issue Triage Bot

> Skill by [ara.so](https://ara.so) — Daily 2026 Skills collection.

ClawSweeper is a conservative AI-powered GitHub maintainer bot that reviews every open issue and PR in a target repository, writes a regenerated markdown record per item, and closes only when evidence is strong. It runs on a weekly cadence per item and uses Codex (`gpt-5.5`) to evaluate each item against a strict set of allowed close reasons.

## What ClawSweeper Does

- Scans all open issues and PRs in a target repo (e.g. `openclaw/openclaw`)
- Writes one markdown file per item under `items/<number>.md`
- Proposes closes only for items that match allowed reasons
- Actually closes items only when `apply_closures=true` is explicitly set
- Archives closed item records to `closed/<number>.md`
- Updates a live dashboard in the README after each run
- Never auto-closes items authored by `OWNER`, `MEMBER`, or `COLLABORATOR`

### Allowed Close Reasons

1. Already implemented on `main`
2. Cannot reproduce on current `main`
3. Belongs on a plugin/skill hub, not in core
4. Too incoherent to be actionable
5. Stale issue older than 60 days with insufficient data to verify the bug

## Installation

Requires **Node 24**.

```bash
git clone https://github.com/openclaw/clawsweeper.git
cd clawsweeper
npm install
npm run build

Set required environment variables:

export GITHUB_TOKEN=$GITHUB_TOKEN          # read access to target repo
export OPENAI_API_KEY=$OPENAI_API_KEY      # Codex access
export CLAWSWEEPER_REPO="owner/repo"       # target repo to scan

Key CLI Commands

Plan a sweep

Scans open items and produces shard batches for review jobs.

npm run plan -- \
  --batch-size 5 \
  --shard-count 40 \
  --max-pages 250 \
  --codex-model gpt-5.5 \
  --codex-reasoning-effort medium \
  --codex-service-tier fast

Review items

Runs Codex on each planned item inside a local checkout of the target repo.

npm run review -- \
  --openclaw-dir ../openclaw \
  --batch-size 5 \
  --max-pages 250 \
  --artifact-dir artifacts/reviews \
  --codex-model gpt-5.5 \
  --codex-reasoning-effort medium \
  --codex-service-tier fast \
  --codex-timeout-ms 600000

Apply review artifacts to the repo

Merges shard artifacts and updates dashboard. Does not close anything yet.

npm run apply-artifacts -- --artifact-dir artifacts/reviews

Apply existing proposals (close issues/PRs)

Re-fetches issue context, recomputes snapshot hash, and closes if nothing changed since the proposal.

npm run apply-decisions -- --limit 20

Options:

Flag	Default	Description
--limit	unlimited	Max fresh closes in this run
--apply-kind	issue	issue, pr, or all
--apply-min-age-days	0	Minimum age of proposal before applying
--close-delay-ms	5000	Delay between close API calls

Reconcile items folder

Moves externally closed items from items/ to closed/ and reopened items back to items/ as stale.

npm run reconcile -- --dry-run   # preview only
npm run reconcile               # apply changes

GitHub Actions Workflow

ClawSweeper is designed to run as a scheduled GitHub Actions workflow on the clawsweeper repo itself. Key workflow inputs:

# Trigger a manual run with apply enabled
workflow_dispatch:
  inputs:
    apply_closures:
      description: "Set to true to actually close issues/PRs"
      default: "false"
    apply_existing:
      description: "Apply existing proposals without re-running Codex"
      default: "false"
    apply_kind:
      description: "issue | pr | all"
      default: "issue"
    apply_min_age_days:
      description: "Min age in days for a proposal to be applied"
      default: "0"

The normal scheduled run is proposal-only — it never comments or closes without explicit apply_closures=true.

Item Record Format

Each item is stored as items/<number>.md. Example structure:

# Issue #58150

**Title:** [Bug]: RISC-V64: OpenClaw fails with LLM request failed

**Outcome:** keep_open

**Reason:** Bug is reproducible and not fixed on main. Insufficient evidence
to close as cannot-reproduce.

**Snapshot hash:** abc123def456

**Reviewed:** Apr 25, 2026, 16:55 UTC

**Proposed close comment:** N/A

When outcome is proposed_close, the record includes the exact comment that will be posted before closing.

Review Cadence

Item type	Cadence
All PRs	Daily
Issues < 30 days old	Daily
Issues ≥ 30 days old with no recent activity	Weekly
Items with new activity since last snapshot	Daily (promoted)

The planner prioritizes: active items → PRs → new issues → older weekly issues when more items are due than fit in a run.

Configuration Reference

ClawSweeper reads configuration from environment variables and CLI flags. There is no separate config file — all settings are passed at invocation time.

Env Var	Purpose
GITHUB_TOKEN	GitHub API access (read for review, write for apply)
OPENAI_API_KEY	Codex API key
CLAWSWEEPER_REPO	Target repo in owner/repo format

CLI Flag	Command	Description
--batch-size	plan, review	Items per shard batch
--shard-count	plan	Number of parallel review shards
--max-pages	plan, review	Max GitHub API pages to scan
--codex-model	plan, review	Model to use (default: gpt-5.5)
--codex-reasoning-effort	plan, review	low, medium, high
--codex-service-tier	plan, review	default, fast
--codex-timeout-ms	review	Per-item timeout (default: 600000)
--artifact-dir	review, apply-artifacts	Directory for shard output
--dry-run	reconcile	Preview without writing
--apply-closures	review	Actually close items (use carefully)

Code Examples

Reading an item record programmatically

import { readFileSync } from 'fs';
import { join } from 'path';

function loadItemRecord(itemNumber) {
  const filePath = join('items', `${itemNumber}.md`);
  const content = readFileSync(filePath, 'utf-8');
  
  const outcomeMatch = content.match(/\*\*Outcome:\*\*\s+(\S+)/);
  const snapshotMatch = content.match(/\*\*Snapshot hash:\*\*\s+(\S+)/);
  
  return {
    number: itemNumber,
    outcome: outcomeMatch?.[1] ?? 'unknown',
    snapshotHash: snapshotMatch?.[1] ?? null,
    raw: content,
  };
}

const record = loadItemRecord(58150);
console.log(record.outcome); // "keep_open" or "proposed_close"

Listing all proposed closes

import { readdirSync, readFileSync } from 'fs';
import { join } from 'path';

function getProposedCloses(itemsDir = 'items') {
  const files = readdirSync(itemsDir).filter(f => f.endsWith('.md'));
  
  return files
    .map(file => {
      const content = readFileSync(join(itemsDir, file), 'utf-8');
      const number = parseInt(file.replace('.md', ''), 10);
      const outcomeMatch = content.match(/\*\*Outcome:\*\*\s+(\S+)/);
      return { number, outcome: outcomeMatch?.[1] };
    })
    .filter(item => item.outcome === 'proposed_close')
    .map(item => item.number);
}

const toClose = getProposedCloses();
console.log(`Proposed closes: ${toClose.length}`);
console.log(toClose);

Checking dashboard metrics from the README

import { readFileSync } from 'fs';

function parseDashboard(readmePath = 'README.md') {
  const content = readFileSync(readmePath, 'utf-8');
  
  const stateMatch = content.match(/State:\s+(.+)/);
  const checkpointMatch = content.match(/Checkpoint (\d+) finished/);
  const totalClosesMatch = content.match(/Total fresh closes in this run:\s+(\d+)\/(\d+)/);
  
  return {
    state: stateMatch?.[1]?.trim(),
    checkpoint: checkpointMatch ? parseInt(checkpointMatch[1], 10) : null,
    closesApplied: totalClosesMatch ? parseInt(totalClosesMatch[1], 10) : null,
    closesLimit: totalClosesMatch ? parseInt(totalClosesMatch[2], 10) : null,
  };
}

const dashboard = parseDashboard();
console.log(dashboard);
// { state: 'Apply in progress', checkpoint: 7, closesApplied: 350, closesLimit: 500 }

Triggering a workflow dispatch via GitHub API

import { Octokit } from '@octokit/rest';

const octokit = new Octokit({ auth: process.env.GITHUB_TOKEN });

async function triggerApplyRun({ limit = 50, kind = 'issue', minAgeDays = 0 } = {}) {
  await octokit.actions.createWorkflowDispatch({
    owner: 'openclaw',
    repo: 'clawsweeper',
    workflow_id: 'sweep.yml',
    ref: 'main',
    inputs: {
      apply_existing: 'true',
      apply_closures: 'true',
      apply_kind: kind,
      apply_min_age_days: String(minAgeDays),
    },
  });
  console.log(`Apply run triggered: limit=${limit}, kind=${kind}`);
}

await triggerApplyRun({ limit: 100, kind: 'issue' });

Common Patterns

Safe incremental apply

Apply a small batch first to verify the bot is behaving correctly:

# Step 1: review only (default, no closes)
npm run plan -- --batch-size 5 --shard-count 10
npm run review -- --openclaw-dir ../myrepo --artifact-dir artifacts/reviews
npm run apply-artifacts -- --artifact-dir artifacts/reviews

# Step 2: inspect proposals
ls items/ | wc -l
grep -l "proposed_close" items/*.md

# Step 3: apply a small batch
npm run apply-decisions -- --limit 5 --apply-kind issue

Excluding PRs from apply runs

The default apply_kind=issue already excludes PRs. To explicitly target only issues:

npm run apply-decisions -- --limit 50 --apply-kind issue

Reviewing a single item manually

# Run plan with a targeted batch override (if supported by your build)
npm run review -- \
  --openclaw-dir ../myrepo \
  --batch-size 1 \
  --artifact-dir artifacts/manual \
  --codex-timeout-ms 600000

Then check artifacts/manual/ and items/<number>.md for the result.

Troubleshooting

Dashboard not updating

The dashboard is updated by the final publish job in the workflow. If it's stale:

• Check the workflow run linked in the README status block
• Look for a timed-out shard (shards time out at 75 minutes)
• Re-run the publish job manually if shards completed but publish failed

Codex leaves changes in the checkout

ClawSweeper makes the target repo checkout read-only in CI and verifies it before and after each review. If Codex writes anything, the item is marked as failed. Locally, ensure the --openclaw-dir path is not the same repo you are actively editing.

GitHub secondary rate limiting during apply

Apply mode implements long retry backoff automatically. When throttled, it posts a heartbeat to the dashboard:

Throttle heartbeat: checkpoint 3, processed 120, retry in 65s

If you need to stop and resume, re-dispatch with apply_existing=true — already-closed items are skipped automatically.

Items reappearing after close

If an issue is reopened externally, reconcile moves it back from closed/ to items/ as stale so the planner re-reviews it:

npm run reconcile -- --dry-run  # check what would move
npm run reconcile               # apply

Maintainer items being proposed for close

ClawSweeper reads author_association from the GitHub API. Items authored by OWNER, MEMBER, or COLLABORATOR are excluded from automated close actions at both plan and apply time. If a maintainer item appears as proposed_close, verify that the GitHub token has sufficient scope to read association data, and re-run the review for that item.