Kira Stale Bot

Automation for stale GitLab issues, merge requests, and branches.

Part of the @kira bots family.

kira-stale packages a ready-to-run gitlab-triage policy in a Docker image, so teams can keep project queues clean without rewriting the same repository maintenance rules for every project.

Features

• Marks stale issues after long inactivity and closes them later
• Validates issue labels and highlights broken label combinations
• Flags issues without descriptions as invalid and closes them automatically
• Detects issues and merge requests without time tracking metadata
• Escalates issue deadlines with deadline::* labels
• Copies metadata from linked issues to merge requests
• Marks stale merge requests that need review or follow-up
• Closes invalid merge requests automatically
• Deletes merged, stale branches after a retention period

Installation

Requirements:

• Docker
• An existing GitLab project
• A GitLab access token with api permissions
• The labels expected by the triage policy

docker pull wemakeservices/kira-stale

Quick Start

Test the policy in dry-run mode first:

docker run --rm wemakeservices/kira-stale \
  gitlab-triage \
  --dry-run \
  --source-id="your-gitlab-project-int-id" \
  --token="your-gitlab-token-with-api-perm"

Run it for real once the output looks correct:

docker run --rm wemakeservices/kira-stale \
  gitlab-triage \
  --source-id="your-gitlab-project-int-id" \
  --token="your-gitlab-token-with-api-perm"

Advanced deployment and scheduling options come from gitlab-triage docs. GitLab's own triage policies are also a useful reference.

Required Labels

The bundled policy expects these labels to exist:

• deadline::soft
• deadline::hard
• deadline::miss
• validation:labels
• validation:stale
• validation:estimate
• validation:invalid
• mr::processed

Unlike deadline::* and mr::*, the validation:* group intentionally uses one : instead of GitLab scoped labels. Several validation labels can be present on the same issue or merge request at the same time.

You can use kira-setup to create these labels for you.

Why Use It

We use this bot to keep GitLab projects in a predictable state. Instead of handling stale items, broken labels, deadline reminders, and cleanup rules manually, kira-stale applies the same policy every time through one reusable Docker image.

Related Projects

• kira: the full bots family
• kira-setup: project setup and shared labels for new repositories
• kira-release: automated semantic releases