Every 5 minutes

Get a Slack message for every new issue

Each new issue on your repo shows up in Slack with its title, author and link.

Runs: Every 5 minutes
Apps: GitHub
AI: Not needed
Access: Issues: read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: post to #dev in Slack every time a new issue is opened in acme/app, with the title, author and link. Leave out pull requests.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

Add to ChatGPT Add to Claude

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

For a maintainer, the first hour after an issue is opened is when it is cheapest to help. A bug report with a clear stack trace can be answered with a one-line fix, and a user who is stuck on installation will give up if nobody replies. Yet GitHub emails are easy to miss among the rest of a busy inbox, so issues sit for days and reporters assume the project is abandoned.

Every 5 minutes issues created since the previous run are listed. Pull requests, which GitHub also returns as issues, are skipped, and each real issue goes to Slack with its title, author and a link. The newest timestamp is saved so the next run begins where the last one stopped.

Maintainers of libraries and developer tools, and support engineers who watch a public repo, use it to hear about problems quickly.

What you get out of it

Reporters hear back fast
A reply within the first hour tells the reporter that the project is alive, and often it is the difference between a helpful bug report and a frustrated user who moves on.
Critical bugs are noticed immediately
A crash on startup or a security concern reaches Slack right away, so it can be triaged before it spreads across social media or into more duplicate reports. Fixing something obvious quickly limits the damage to your reputation.
Slack is where the team already is
Posting issues in a channel brings teammates into the conversation, so a question about a part of the code you do not know gets answered by the person who does.
Pull requests do not clutter the feed
Skipping pull requests keeps the channel about real problems, so every message is something that needs a decision about priority, ownership or a quick answer. That keeps focus on user problems rather than code churn.
No gap or double-up between runs
Saving the newest timestamp means an issue opened between checks is still caught next time, and one already posted is not announced a second time. That is particularly helpful when a workflow is paused for a day.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every five minutes, the automation checks your GitHub repo for issues opened since the last check.
Pull requests are left out, so only real issues come through.
Each new issue is posted to your Slack channel with its number, title, author and link.
It remembers the newest issue it posted, so nothing is posted twice.

Before it runs live

Connect GitHub

What you get

RunsEvery 5 minutes

Get a Slack message for every new issuetoday, 9:00Succeeded

Slack · #devNew issue #921: Export fails for reports over 10k rows by kchen https://github.com/acme/app/issues/921

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other GitHub steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

get_alerted_on_new_issues.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, notify, report_fetched

def gh(method, path, **kw):
    resp = http.request(method, f"https://api.github.com{path}", headers={
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.connection('github', 'work')}",
        "Accept": "application/vnd.github+json"}, **kw)
    resp.raise_for_status()
    return resp.json() if resp.content else None

REPO = "acme/app"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    last = state.get("last_number")
    issues = [i for i in gh("GET", f"/repos/{REPO}/issues", params={"state": "all", "sort": "created",
              "direction": "desc", "per_page": 30}) if "pull_request" not in i]
    new = [i for i in issues if last is not None and i["number"] > last]
    report_fetched(len(new))
    if issues:
        state.set("last_number", max([i["number"] for i in issues] + [last or 0]))
    if not new:
        return {"posted": 0}
    for i in reversed(new):
        notify.slack(f"New issue #{i['number']}: {i['title']} by {i['user']['login']}\n{i['html_url']}", channel="#dev")
    return {"posted": len(new)}

FAQ

Common questions

Why are pull requests skipped?

GitHub's issues list also returns pull requests, because every PR is technically an issue. The automation filters those out so only genuine issues are posted. If you want PRs announced too, use the new pull request alert instead.

Can I watch more than one repository?

Yes. Name each repository and the same check runs for all of them, posting the repo name with each issue. Each repo keeps its own saved timestamp, so none of them interferes with another. Each repository keeps its own timestamp.

Can it post only issues with certain labels?

It can. Issues usually arrive without labels, so most people filter by keywords in the title or by author instead. Tell your AI assistant what you want to match and approve the change before it runs.

What permissions does it need?

Issues: read. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Every 5 minutes