GitHub Issues & PR Monitor — Filter, Watch & Webhooks

Monitor and extract GitHub issues and pull requests matching custom label, keyword, state, and date filters. Engineered for automated issue tracking, CI/CD triage webhooks, customer support monitoring, and open-source project intelligence.

Pairs seamlessly with Apify Schedules and Webhooks to alert your engineering or product teams the moment critical issues appear.

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What this Actor does

Given any repository (owner/repo or full URL), this Actor extracts structured issue and pull request records:

• Title, Author & Body Excerpt: Cleans issue bodies into digestible text excerpts suitable for notifications and LLM classification.
• Label Filtering: Filter issues by labels (e.g. bug, security, feature-request, help wanted).
• Keyword Matching: Search within titles and issue bodies for specific phrases (e.g. memory leak, crash, regression).
• Incremental Date Filtering (since): Pass an ISO timestamp to only retrieve issues created or updated since your previous scheduled run.
• Pull Request Control: Toggle inclusion of pull requests or restrict purely to issue discussions.

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Why use this Actor

• Built for Automation & Webhooks: Designed specifically to run on an hourly or daily schedule with webhook payloads forwarded to Slack, Discord, Linear, or internal dashboards.
• Incremental & Cost-Efficient: Use the since parameter to avoid re-scraping existing issues and keep Pay-Per-Event billing minimal ($0.0003 per issue).
• Fast, Lightweight Execution: No headless browser required; runs with direct GitHub API efficiency.
• Multi-Filter Combination: Combine label filters, keyword filters, and state toggles in a single run.

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Features

• Granular State Selection: Filter by open, closed, or all states.
• Configurable Result Limits: Fetch from 1 up to 1,000 issues per run.
• Pre-Configured Dataset Views: Review issues instantly in Apify's interactive tabular viewer.

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Use cases

• OSS Maintainers & DevRel: Monitor community repositories for critical bugs or unanswered questions.
• Customer Support Teams: Watch customer-facing open-source repos to escalate bug reports into ticketing systems.
• Competitive Tracking: Monitor competitor repositories to detect what features their users are demanding or what bugs they are encountering.
• Automated Security Alerts: Alert on issues tagged with security or vulnerability.

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Input

Field	Type	Description	Default	Example
repo	String (Required)	Repository to monitor. Format: owner/repo or full GitHub URL.	"vercel/next.js"	"facebook/react"
labels	Array of Strings	Only return issues/PRs with at least one of these labels.	["bug", "feature-request"]	["bug", "urgent"]
keywords	Array of Strings	Only return issues/PRs whose title or body matches these terms.	[]	["crash", "memory leak"]
since	String (ISO Date)	Only return issues/PRs created or updated after this date/time.	""	"2026-09-01T00:00:00Z"
includesPRs	Boolean	Include pull requests in the output (default true).	true	false
state	String (Select)	Filter by state: open, closed, or all.	"open"	"open"
maxResults	Integer	Maximum number of items to return (1 to 1000).	100	100

Example input

{
  "repo": "vercel/next.js",
  "labels": ["bug"],
  "keywords": ["turbopack"],
  "state": "open",
  "maxResults": 50
}

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Output

Every issue or pull request is stored as an individual record in your Apify dataset.

Field Definitions

• number (Integer): GitHub issue or pull request number.
• title (String): Title of the issue/PR.
• type (String): 'issue' or 'pull_request'.
• author (String): GitHub username of the author.
• labels (Array of Strings): Assigned label names.
• state (String): State (open or closed).
• url (String): Direct link to the issue/PR on GitHub.
• createdAt (ISO Date): Creation timestamp.
• updatedAt (ISO Date): Last update timestamp.
• bodyExcerpt (String): Plain-text excerpt of the issue body (first 500 characters).
• repo (String): Originating repository slug (owner/repo).
• fetchedAt (ISO Date): Extraction timestamp.

Example output

{
  "number": 68421,
  "title": "Turbopack crash when resolving symlinked workspace packages",
  "type": "issue",
  "author": "developer-alex",
  "labels": ["bug", "turbopack", "area: build"],
  "state": "open",
  "url": "https://github.com/vercel/next.js/issues/68421",
  "createdAt": "2026-09-28T02:14:10Z",
  "updatedAt": "2026-09-28T03:45:00Z",
  "bodyExcerpt": "When configuring a pnpm monorepo with symlinked internal packages, running next dev --turbo results in a panic in the resolution resolver...",
  "repo": "vercel/next.js",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-09-28T04:18:53.694Z"
}

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Pricing (Pay-Per-Event)

Event Name	Price (USD)	Charged When
actor-start	$0.01	Charged once when run initializes
issue-found	$0.0003	Charged per issue or pull request delivered

Example cost: Extracting 100 matching bug reports costs $0.01 (start) + (100 × $0.0003 = $0.03) = $0.04 total.

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API & Webhook Automation

Hourly Slack Alert via Apify Scheduler & Webhook

1. Schedule the Actor to run every hour with your repo and since configured.
2. In the Actor's Integrations / Webhooks tab, configure a webhook pointing to your Slack webhook URL or Zapier/Make webhook.
3. Every hour, receive real-time notifications for newly posted issues matching your criteria.

Python Example

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("lovely_radiologist/github-issues-monitor").call(run_input={
    "repo": "facebook/react",
    "labels": ["bug"],
    "state": "open",
    "maxResults": 25
})

for issue in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(f"#{issue['number']} [{issue['state']}]: {issue['title']} ({issue['url']})")

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Limitations

• Search Scope: Keyword filtering checks within the fetched page of issues. For repository-wide historical keyword searches spanning years, provide specific date windows.
• Public Repositories: Scrapes public GitHub repositories.

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FAQ

Can I monitor pull requests only?

Yes! Set includesPRs: true and add the state: open filter. You can also filter by specific PR labels if the repository uses them (e.g. pr:ready-to-review).

How do I fetch only issues since the last run?

Supply an ISO timestamp in the since field (e.g. "2026-09-28T00:00:00Z"). In automated schedules, you can pass the last run's timestamp dynamically via API.

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Support & Related Actors

• GitHub Repository Insights — Full repository profile with health score and contributors.
• GitHub Organization Scraper — Scan all repos across an entire organization.
• GitHub Trending Radar — Discover breakout repositories.