GitHub Repo Monitor

Create compact repository intelligence digests from the public GitHub REST API. This Apify actor is designed for devtools marketers, venture analysts, product researchers, developer-relations teams, and founders who track a watchlist of GitHub projects and need clean, agent-friendly JSON instead of manually opening repository pages.

GitHub repository monitoring for stars, forks, issues, and releases

The actor accepts repositories as owner/name strings or full GitHub repository URLs, then calls api.github.com to collect current repository signals. Each output row includes stars, forks, watchers, open issues, subscribers, language, topics, license, default branch, archive/fork status, created/updated/pushed timestamps, homepage, and repository URLs. When enabled, it also fetches the latest GitHub release and records the tag, name, URL, published date, prerelease flag, and draft flag.

What you get

Every dataset row is a compact repo-digest object suitable for spreadsheets, dashboards, alerts, and LLM agents. The output includes a summary block with the highest-signal metrics and optional delta fields: star delta, fork delta, issue delta, whether the latest release changed, and the previous release tag. Provide a previousSnapshot keyed by owner/repo from an earlier run to populate deltas; omit it to get current snapshots only. Error rows are pushed for inaccessible repositories or transient API problems so one bad watchlist item never crashes the whole run.

Use cases for devtools marketers and VCs

Use this actor to monitor competitor momentum, track open-source category leaders, build weekly devtools market reports, spot release activity after funding announcements, compare fast-growing infrastructure projects, qualify integration partners, or create lightweight alerts when a watched repository starts gaining stars quickly. Venture analysts can feed the compact JSON into notebooks or CRM enrichment. Developer marketing teams can use it to watch ecosystem projects and time campaigns around releases.

How to use

Start with the default input (psf/requests and octocat/Hello-World) to produce a small digest in under five minutes. Add up to maxRepos repositories to the repos list. The actor truncates client-side exactly at maxRepos, uses timeouts on every request, and includes polite delays because unauthenticated GitHub API usage is limited to roughly 60 requests per hour. For larger watchlists, add an optional GitHub token in githubToken; the token is treated as a secret input and only used as an Authorization header.

Pricing

This actor uses Apify pay-per-event pricing. The single paid event is repo-digest at $0.01 per successfully exported repository digest. There are no extra paid events for release lookups or error rows. Local, free, or non-PPE runs are capped by the built-in free-run guard.

FAQ

Does this scrape GitHub web pages?

No. It only calls HTTP public endpoints under api.github.com and does not use proxies, browser automation, or logins.

Do I need a GitHub token?

No for small watchlists. Without a token, GitHub allows limited unauthenticated API use. Add a token only when you need higher rate limits or more reliable batch monitoring.

How are deltas calculated?

Pass previousSnapshot as an object keyed by repository name, such as {"psf/requests": {"stargazersCount": 52000, "forksCount": 9500, "openIssuesCount": 300, "latestReleaseTag": "v2.31.0"}}. The actor subtracts those baseline values from the current API response.

What happens if a repository has no releases?

The actor still exports the repository digest and leaves latest-release fields empty. Missing releases do not count as errors.