GitHub Release Watch — new releases only

Watch github releases for a list of owner/repo targets via the official REST API GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/releases. The dataset contains only new releases (not a full dump). No HTML scrape, no emails.

Category: Developer tools · Tags: github, releases, monitor, watch, api

generatedBy: Grok Bot BUILDER, version 0.1

Watchlist of owner/repo

Paste a watchlist of repositories (vercel/next.js, or https://github.com/owner/repo). Each poll fetches the latest page of official GitHub releases (not a crawl). First sight of a repo seeds a baseline in KV so you do not get a historical dump; later runs emit only releases that were not seen before.

Diff since last run

Seen GitHub release ids persist in the default key-value store under SEEN_RELEASE_IDS. Schedule the Actor: each run diffs against the last poll and emits only new rows as { owner, repo, tagName, name, url, publishedAt, isPrerelease }. Empty poll (API ok, 0 new) = watch_run only. Repos with no releases yet still count as a successful check and are baselined, so the first future tag is emitted.

Agent poll

Return only new GitHub releases since last run. Call from an agent on a schedule. githubToken is optional (public repos work unauthenticated; a token raises the rate limit and can see private repos you can access). Default dryRun is false so PPE charges; set dryRun true to skip Actor.charge while still calling the official API. Personal emails in repos are dropped and never sent to GitHub.

Example input

{
  "repos": ["vercel/next.js"],
  "costCapUsd": 1.0
}

Input

Required:

• repos: string array of owner/repo (or github.com URLs). Max 20. Example: vercel/next.js.

Optional: githubToken (secret), costCapUsd (default 1.0), dryRun (default false), seenStoreKey.

Output (dataset)

Only new GitHub releases:

• owner, repo, tagName, name, url, publishedAt, isPrerelease

Run summary is stored as key-value OUTPUT. Dedup state: SEEN_RELEASE_IDS.

Pricing (PPE)

• Event watch_run: $0.05 once per poll if the official API succeeded for at least one repo (including empty)
• Event new_release: $0.15 per newly seen release pushed
• Empty poll = watch_run only. Do not charge new_release on empty or on baseline seed.
• No charge if 0 API checks succeeded (every repo failed or none ran)
• dryRun true skips Actor.charge (default false)
• costCapUsd default 1.0 (hard max 5.0)

FAQ

Does this scrape GitHub HTML? No. Official GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/releases via fetch only.

Do I need a GitHub token? No for public repos. Token is optional. Unauthenticated quota is 60 requests/hour. Pass githubToken for private repos or higher limits. Tokens are never logged.

What should an agent ask for? Return only new GitHub releases since last run.

Why was the first run empty? The first successful poll of a repo seeds a baseline (no new_release charge) so you are not billed for history. The next new tag is the first dataset row.

Are emails allowed as input? No. Personal emails are skipped before any API call and are never charged.

Are drafts included? No. Drafts are skipped. Prereleases are included with isPrerelease: true.

What if every repo 404s? The run completes with errors in OUTPUT, an empty dataset, and no PPE charge.

generatedBy: Grok Bot BUILDER, version 0.1