Hourly

Hear about new releases of repos you follow

When a project you depend on ships a release, you get the version and release notes.

Runs: Hourly
Apps: GitHub
AI: Not needed
Access: Contents: read (public repos need none)

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: check every hour for new releases of vercel/next.js and facebook/react, and post the version and release notes to #dependencies in Slack.

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

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

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

If your product depends on a library, a framework or a tool, a new release is information you want quickly: a security patch you should apply today, a major version with breaking changes you should plan for, or a feature you have been waiting on. GitHub's release notifications are buried among thousands of other emails, so teams find out weeks later when a deprecation warning appears in the build.

Every hour the latest releases of the repositories you care about are fetched. Any release you have not been told about is posted to your chosen channel with its name, tag and link to the release notes. The tag is remembered so each release is announced once.

It is useful for developers who depend on open source packages, DevOps engineers tracking infrastructure tools and product managers following competitors' public repos.

What you get out of it

Security patches get applied sooner
Hearing about a patch release within the hour shortens the window when your project runs a known-vulnerable version, which is what auditors and customers ask about. Faster patching is also a concrete answer when a customer security questionnaire asks how quickly you apply updates.
Breaking changes get planned for
Seeing a new major version when it ships gives your team weeks to schedule the upgrade, instead of discovering it when a dependency bump fails on a Friday. Planned migrations are cheaper and less risky than emergency ones.
Follow many projects in one place
Releases from every library you depend on land in a single channel, which is easier to keep up with than watching each repository's notification settings. Nobody on the team needs to remember to check each project's page.
Competitor and ecosystem awareness
Following the public repositories of tools around your product shows what they are shipping and how often, which informs your own roadmap conversations. It is a lightweight form of market and technology intelligence.
Prereleases do not drown the feed
Because only the latest release per repository is announced once, a noisy project does not flood the channel and each message stays meaningful. That discipline keeps the alert useful rather than irritating.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every hour, ClickRuntime checks the latest release of each GitHub project you follow.
It skips releases it has already told you about.
Each new release is posted to your Slack channel with the version, the start of the release notes and a link.

Before it runs live

Connect GitHub

What you get

RunsHourly

Hear about new releases of repos you followtoday, 9:00Succeeded

Slack · #dependenciesfacebook/react v19.2.1 - Fix hydration warning with useId… https://github.com/facebook/react/releases/tag/v19.2.1

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.

new_release_notification.pyexample

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

REPOS = ["vercel/next.js", "facebook/react"]

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    seen = state.get("tags") or {}
    new = []
    for repo in REPOS:
        releases = http.get(f"https://api.github.com/repos/{repo}/releases", params={"per_page": 5},
                            headers={"Accept": "application/vnd.github+json"}).json()
        new += [(repo, r) for r in releases if not r["draft"] and repo in seen and r["published_at"] > seen[repo]]
        if releases:
            seen[repo] = max([r["published_at"] for r in releases] + [seen.get(repo, "")])
    report_fetched(len(new))
    state.set("tags", seen)
    if not new:
        return {"posted": 0}
    for repo, r in new:
        notify.slack(f"{repo} {r['tag_name']}\n{(r['body'] or '')[:800]}\n{r['html_url']}", channel="#dependencies")
    return {"posted": len(new)}

FAQ

Common questions

Does it announce pre-releases and drafts?

You decide. GitHub marks some releases as pre-releases, such as release candidates. By default you can skip them so only stable versions are announced, or include them if you want early warning. Many teams skip candidates to avoid noise.

How many repositories can it follow?

You can list as many repositories as you like. Each one's last announced tag is remembered separately. Very long lists take a little longer per run, but hourly checks stay well within normal use. Adding a repository is a quick change.

Do I need to own the repository?

No. Releases of public repositories can be read with any valid GitHub token, so you can track projects you do not own. For private repositories the token needs access to them. Public releases can be read without owning anything.

What permissions does it need?

Contents: read (public repos need none). 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