daily-pr-email

This repository contains a GitHub Actions workflow that collects open Pull Requests (PRs) from one or more GitHub repositories and publishes a digest as a new GitHub Issue each run.

GitHub’s notification system can then deliver that Issue to your inbox (e.g., Outlook) as email—no SMTP setup required.

What it does

On a schedule, the workflow:

1. Queries a configured list of repositories for open PRs
2. Filters out:
   • Draft PRs
   • PRs whose title starts with WIP (case-insensitive)
3. Generates a short Markdown digest containing only:
   • PR title
   • Link to PR
4. Creates a new Issue in this repository containing the digest (labeled pr-digest)

Because each run creates a new Issue, you can receive distinct emails (one per run) via GitHub Notifications.

Why Issues?

GitHub can email you about Issue activity using your GitHub notification settings. This avoids having to configure SMTP credentials or a third-party email provider inside Actions.

How to use

1) Configure which repos to scan

Edit the workflow file:

• .github/workflows/pr-digest.yml

Find the REPOS environment variable and add repositories as a space-separated list in owner/repo format:

env:
  REPOS: "uclibs/staff-directory-23 uclibs/ucrate uclibs/application_portfolio"

2) Configure when it runs

In the same workflow file, update the cron schedule under on.schedule.

Notes:

• Cron is interpreted in UTC.
• GitHub scheduled workflows are not a real-time cron service; some delay/jitter is normal.

Current schedule (as configured in the workflow):

• Monday–Friday at 10:00 UTC (which is 5:00 AM EST; during EDT it will run at 6:00 AM local)

Example:

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 10 * * 1-5"

3) Enable email delivery (GitHub Notifications → your Outlook inbox)

This workflow itself does not send email. GitHub does.

To receive emails:

1. In GitHub, go to Settings → Emails
   • Add your work email address and verify it
   • (Recommended) enable Keep my email addresses private
2. Go to Settings → Notifications
   • Enable Email notifications
   • Select your work email address as the destination
3. In this repository, click Watch → Custom → Issues
   • This makes “new Issue created” generate a notification email.

If your organization filters GitHub emails, you may need to check Outlook quarantine/junk folders or allowlist GitHub notifications.

4) Run it manually (for testing)

1. Go to this repo on GitHub
2. Click Actions
3. Choose workflow Daily PR Email
4. Click Run workflow

A successful run should create a new Issue in the Issues tab.

Output format

Each Issue contains a digest like:

• A header with the run timestamp (UTC)

• A section per repo

• A bullet list of PR links:

  uclibs/ucrate

  • Fix build pipeline
  • Update dependencies

All digest issues are labeled: pr-digest.

Housekeeping (bulk-closing old digest issues)

This repo may accumulate many digest issues over time. Since they are labeled pr-digest, you can filter and bulk-close them later:

• Issues → search: label:pr-digest is:open
• Select all → Mark as → Closed

(Closing issues will also generate notifications, so do this when convenient.)

Notes / limitations

• This repository must have GitHub Actions enabled.
• Scheduled workflows only run based on the workflow file on the repo’s default branch (usuallyqa for UC).
• Creating a new Issue each run generates a lot of Issues and emails if the schedule is frequent.

Customization ideas

• Include PR author, age, labels, or review status
• Exclude additional title prefixes (e.g., DO NOT MERGE, [WIP])
• Only create an Issue if the digest changes (reduces inbox noise)
• Switch from “new Issue per run” to “update a single rolling Issue” (reduces issue count)

Repository contents

• .github/workflows/pr-digest.yml — scheduled workflow that generates the digest and creates an Issue

Security / privacy

• No email addresses are stored in this repository.
• Email delivery is handled by GitHub Notifications, configured in your GitHub account settings.
• If this is a public repo and you commit from your local machine, consider using GitHub’s noreply email address for commits to avoid exposing your work email in commit metadata:
  • https://github.com/settings/emails