PR Management Module — Skill

Purpose

Triage, audit, and surface actionable intelligence on open pull requests. Identify stale PRs, merge conflicts, review gaps, CI failures, and ready-to-merge candidates.

Execution Order

Runs as module #4 during full assessments (after Security, Release Health, Community Health). Defers Dependabot PRs to the Security module — if a PR is a Dependabot security fix, it should already be surfaced under Security findings.

Helper Commands

# List all open PRs
gh-manager prs list --repo owner/name

# List PRs filtered by label
gh-manager prs list --repo owner/name --label maintenance

# Get full PR details (reviews, CI, size)
gh-manager prs get --repo owner/name --pr 42

# Get changed files with diffs
gh-manager prs diff --repo owner/name --pr 42

# Get comments (for dedup marker checking)
gh-manager prs comments --repo owner/name --pr 42

# Actions (all require owner approval)
gh-manager prs label --repo owner/name --pr 42 --add "stale"
gh-manager prs comment --repo owner/name --pr 42 --body "Activity check..."
gh-manager prs request-review --repo owner/name --pr 42 --reviewers "user1,org/team"
gh-manager prs merge --repo owner/name --pr 42 --method squash
gh-manager prs close --repo owner/name --pr 42 --body "Closing: superseded by #55"

Full assessment mode: Do not output the 🔀 PR Management banner during a full assessment. Collect findings and feed them into the unified 📊 view. Use the per-module banner format only for narrow PR checks.

Assessment Flow

Step 1: Fetch All Open PRs

gh-manager prs list --repo owner/name --state open

If there are no open PRs, report clean and move on:

No open PRs — PR management is all clear.

Step 2: Triage Each PR

For each open PR, fetch full details:

gh-manager prs get --repo owner/name --pr N

Assess each PR on these dimensions:

Staleness: Calculate days since updated_at. Compare against the tier's staleness threshold (from config or tier defaults in Section 7.3 of the design doc). Skip PRs with do-not-close or long-running labels (configurable via ignore_labels).

Merge conflicts: Check mergeable and mergeable_state fields. If mergeable: false, the PR has conflicts.

Review status: From review_summary:

approved — ready for merge consideration
changes_requested — author needs to address feedback
pending — reviewers assigned but haven't reviewed
none — no reviewers assigned

CI status: From ci_status:

success — all checks passing
failure — one or more checks failing
pending — checks still running

Size: From size field (S/M/L/XL based on lines changed).

Dependabot check: If the PR author is dependabot[bot] or dependabot, defer to Security module. Don't duplicate in PR findings during full assessments. During narrow PR checks, include them.

Step 3: Classify PRs

Sort PRs into categories:

Ready to merge: Approved reviews + CI passing + no conflicts + not draft Needs attention: Stale, has conflicts, CI failing, changes requested Waiting: Draft PRs, pending reviews, recently active Deferred: Dependabot PRs (during full assessment), PRs with ignore labels

Step 4: Present Findings

Present by category, most actionable first. After presenting findings with ≥2 action-relevant details, apply the progressive depth offer once per findings block (Communication Principle #7 in the core skill; skip for advanced owners).

🔀 PR Management — ha-light-controller

Ready to merge (1): • PR #42 "Add dark mode support" — approved by @reviewer, CI passing, 3 files changed (S)

Needs attention (2): • PR #57 "Refactor config" — merge conflicts, CI failing, idle 14 days • PR #31 "Update deps" — changes requested by @reviewer, idle 7 days

Waiting (1): • PR #63 "WIP: New feature" — draft, 2 days old

PR #42 looks ready to go.

Use AskUserQuestion:

"Merge PR #42" — proceed to merge method selection
"Not yet" — leave open, flag as deferred
"Tell me more" — show full diff and CI details first

Actions (Owner Approval Required)

Label Stale PRs

When a PR exceeds the staleness threshold:

gh-manager prs label --repo owner/name --pr 42 --add "stale"

Post Activity Check Comments

An activity check is a gentle ping posted as a comment on the PR thread — it asks whether work is still in progress and gives the author a chance to respond before any stale-close action. On public repos, external contributors will see this comment.

For stale PRs, post a reminder comment. Always check for existing dedup markers first:

gh-manager prs comments --repo owner/name --pr 42

Search comment bodies for . If found, don't post another one.

If no marker exists:

gh-manager prs comment --repo owner/name --pr 42 --body "<!-- gh-manager:activity-check -->
👋 This PR has been idle for 14 days. Is it still in progress, or can it be closed?

If you need more time, add the \`long-running\` label and I won't flag it again.

*Posted by GitHub Repo Manager*"

Label PRs with Conflicts

gh-manager prs label --repo owner/name --pr 42 --add "needs-rebase"

Label Ready-to-Merge PRs

gh-manager prs label --repo owner/name --pr 42 --add "ready-to-merge"

Request Reviewers

Requesting a reviewer sends them a notification and adds their name to the PR's review panel — they'll receive an email (subject to their notification settings) and are expected to review the code.

gh-manager prs request-review --repo owner/name --pr 42 --reviewers "username"

Merge PRs

⚠️ Only on explicit owner request. Never auto-merge.

When the owner asks to merge, surface the irreversibility note first — this is the owner-visible ⚠️:

⚠️ Merging is permanent — commits become part of the branch history. To undo, you'd need a separate revert commit. How would you like to merge this PR?

Then use AskUserQuestion with merge method options:

"Squash and merge" (recommended for most repos — clean history)
"Merge commit" — preserves full commit history
"Rebase and merge" — linear history without a merge commit
"Don't merge yet" — cancel

Then execute on confirmation:

gh-manager prs merge --repo owner/name --pr 42 --method squash

Close Stale PRs

⚠️ Closing a PR is visible to all contributors and watchers. The PR enters "closed" state — on Tier 3/4 repos, external contributors receive a notification. PRs can be reopened, but their associated branch may be deleted if "delete head branches on close" is enabled in repo settings.

Use AskUserQuestion before closing:

PR #57 has been idle for 45 days with unresolved conflicts.

Options:

"Close with comment" — post an explanation, then close
"Skip — leave it open" — move on without closing this PR
"Cancel stale cleanup" — stop closing stale PRs for this session

On "Close with comment":

gh-manager prs close --repo owner/name --pr 42 --body "Closing this PR due to extended inactivity (45 days). The branch has merge conflicts that haven't been resolved. Feel free to reopen if you'd like to continue work on this.

*Closed by GitHub Repo Manager*"

Cross-Module Interactions

With Security

Dependabot PRs that fix security alerts: present once under Security
During full assessment, skip Dependabot PRs in PR Management
During narrow PR check, include everything

With Issue Triage

If a PR references an issue ("fixes #12", "closes #8"), note the link
If a merged PR references an open issue, pass that to Issue Triage

With Community Health

If a PR updates community health files (CONTRIBUTING.md, etc.), note it addresses community health drift

Configurable Policies

From pr_management config section:

Setting	Default	Description
`staleness_threshold_days`	`auto` (tier default)	Days idle before flagging
`ignore_labels`	`["do-not-close", "long-running"]`	PRs with these labels skip staleness
`size_thresholds.small`	`50`	Lines changed for S classification
`size_thresholds.medium`	`200`	Lines changed for M classification
`size_thresholds.large`	`500`	Lines changed for L classification

Error Handling

Error	Response
403 on merge	"I can't merge PRs on this repo. Check that your PAT has Contents write access and the branch isn't protected beyond your permissions."
405 on merge (not mergeable)	"This PR can't be merged in its current state — it may have conflicts or failing required checks."
422 on review request	"That user may not have access to this repo."

pr-management