oss-maintainer-toolkit 0.4.0

OSS Maintainer Toolkit — automated triage for PRs, issues, contributors, and review queues

OSS Maintainer Toolkit

Automated triage for PRs, issues, contributors, and review queues. A free GitHub Action and CLI built on a three-tier pipeline: embedding-based dedup, heuristic scoring, and optional LLM vision alignment.

Every PR gets a verdict: FAST_TRACK, REVIEW_REQUIRED, or RECOMMEND_CLOSE.

Tested on OpenClaw (3,368 open PRs): cut the maintainer review queue by 36% and found 6% duplicate PRs in 30 seconds. See the full report.

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Installation

# Core toolkit
pip install oss-maintainer-toolkit

# With PR triage / gatekeeper pipeline
pip install "oss-maintainer-toolkit[gatekeeper]"

# For development
pip install -e ".[dev,gatekeeper]"

CLI usage

maintainer assess --owner openclaw --repo openclaw --pr 18675  # PR triage

MCP server

python -m oss_maintainer_toolkit.mcp  # start the MCP server

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Quick Start (GitHub Action)

Copy this workflow into .github/workflows/pr-triage.yml in your repo:

name: PR Triage

on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened]

permissions:
  pull-requests: write
  contents: read

jobs:
  triage:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: pranayom/oss-maintainer-toolkit@v1
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

That's it. Every new PR gets a scorecard comment with a verdict and flags.

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How It Works

PR opened
    |
    v
[Tier 1: Embedding Dedup]     — sentence-transformers, cosine similarity
    |                            Duplicates -> RECOMMEND_CLOSE (stop)
    v
[Tier 2: Heuristic Scoring]   — 7 deterministic rules, weighted scoring
    |                            Flagged -> REVIEW_REQUIRED (stop)
    v
[Tier 3: Vision Alignment]    — LLM compares PR against Vision Document (optional)
    |
    v
FAST_TRACK

Tiers run strictly in sequence. Each tier is a gate — failures don't proceed to the next tier. This reserves LLM time for the minority of PRs where semantic judgment is actually useful.

Tier 1 — Embedding Dedup (free, local)

Computes semantic embeddings for PR title + description + diff using all-MiniLM-L6-v2. Flags duplicates above a cosine similarity threshold (default: 0.90).

Tier 2 — Heuristic Scoring (free, deterministic)

Seven rules scored against PR metadata:

Rule	What it catches
new_account	GitHub account < 90 days old
first_contribution	No previously merged PRs on this repo
sensitive_paths	Changes to auth, credentials, CI/CD, extensions
low_test_ratio	Code added without proportional tests
unjustified_deps	Dependency changes without explanation
large_diff_hiding	Large PR with small sensitive changes buried in bulk
temporal_clustering	Multiple new-account PRs within a short window

Tier 3 — Vision Alignment (optional, $0 via OpenRouter)

Compares the PR diff against your project's Vision Document (a YAML file defining principles, anti-patterns, and focus areas). Uses OpenRouter free models. Requires an OPENROUTER_API_KEY (free at openrouter.ai/keys).

---

Inputs

Input	Required	Default	Description
github_token	Yes	—	GitHub token for API access (usually secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN)
vision_document	No	""	Path to YAML vision document (relative to repo root)
openrouter_api_key	No	""	OpenRouter API key for Tier 3 ($0 cost). Tier 3 skipped if not provided.
openrouter_model	No	openai/gpt-oss-120b:free	OpenRouter model for Tier 3
duplicate_threshold	No	0.9	Cosine similarity threshold for duplicate detection
suspicion_threshold	No	0.6	Suspicion score threshold for flagging
enforce_vision	No	false	Enable Tier 3 vision alignment (set to true after reviewing your vision doc)
post_comment	No	true	Post scorecard as a PR comment

Outputs

Output	Description
verdict	FAST_TRACK, REVIEW_REQUIRED, or RECOMMEND_CLOSE
scorecard_json	Full scorecard as JSON for downstream CI steps

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Vision Documents

A Vision Document is an optional YAML file that defines what your project is trying to be. It enables Tier 3, where an LLM evaluates whether a PR aligns with your project's direction.

Example structure:

project: my-project
principles:
  - name: "Security First"
    description: "All changes touching auth or credentials require security review"
  - name: "Test Everything"
    description: "Every feature PR must include tests"

anti_patterns:
  - "Adding dependencies without justification"
  - "Modifying CI/CD without maintainer approval"

focus_areas:
  - "src/auth/"
  - "src/credentials/"
  - ".github/"

Place it at .github/vision.yaml and set vision_document: ".github/vision.yaml" in the action inputs.

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Example Scorecard Comment

When the action runs on a PR, it posts a comment like:

⚠ PR Triage: REVIEW REQUIRED

First-time contributor modifying sensitive paths without tests.

Dimension	Score	Summary
Hygiene & Dedup	++++++++-- 0.80	No duplicates found
Contributor Risk	++++------ 0.40	New account + sensitive paths

Flags

• [HIGH] Sensitive Paths: PR modifies src/auth/oauth.ts, src/credentials/store.ts
• [MEDIUM] First Contribution: No previously merged PRs from this author
• [MEDIUM] Low Test Ratio: 245 lines added, 0 test lines

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Roadmap

• PR Triage — Shipped (v0.3.0)
• Issue Triage — Dedup and classify issues
• Issue-to-PR Linking — Suggest which PRs address which issues
• Label Automation — Auto-classify PRs/issues into project label taxonomies
• Contributor Profiles — Track contribution patterns and reliability
• Review Routing — Suggest reviewers based on file ownership
• Smart Stale Detection — Semantic staleness (superseded, merged elsewhere, blocked)
• Cross-PR Conflict Detection — Surface PRs with overlapping file changes

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Evidence: OpenClaw Triage

We ran this tool against 100 of OpenClaw's 3,368 open PRs:

Verdict	Count	Meaning
FAST_TRACK	64 (64%)	Safe for quick review
REVIEW_REQUIRED	30 (30%)	Flagged — needs human attention
RECOMMEND_CLOSE	6 (6%)	Likely duplicate

• Found 3 duplicate clusters (6 PRs) at 0.90 threshold
• 89% of PRs from first-time contributors
• 40% touch security-sensitive paths
• Extrapolated: ~200 closable duplicates in the full backlog

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Cost

$0. All tiers run for free:

• Tier 1: sentence-transformers on CPU (GitHub Actions runner)
• Tier 2: Pure Python rules
• Tier 3: OpenRouter free models (optional, free API key)

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License

MIT