Announcement Drafter

A 🤖 for drafting new GitHub announcements using pull requests
Screenshot of Announcement Drafter app
Screenshot of Announcement Drafter app

Repository

philip-gai/announcement-drafter

Authors

philip-gai

Updated

March 28, 2023

Announcement Drafter

A 🤖  for drafting new GitHub announcements using pull requests

1️⃣  Create a pull request to get feedback from your teammates on your discussion post
2️⃣  Merge the pull request and the discussion automatically gets created in whatever repository or team you want!

Quickstart Guide

  1. Install the GitHub App and authorize for any repositories or teams you would like it to be able to post to or watch for markdown posts.

  2. Add a .github/announcement-drafter.yml (not .yaml) configuration file to any repositories you want the bot to watch. [Look here for an example in the demo repo][announcement-drafter demo config]

    1. Provide what folders you want the announcement-drafter bot to watch and (optionally) what folders you would like it to ignore when new pull requests are open
    watch_folders:
      - docs/
    ignore_folders:
      - docs/demo/ignore
  3. Now whenever you create a pull request with discussion markdown in those watch folders, announcement-drafter will ask for approvals to create discussions, and when the pull request is merged, it will create the discussions and post as the author!

  4. See Usage for more specific usage instructions

Usage

Prerequisites

  1. Follow the Quickstart guide for information on getting started
  2. If there is no .github/announcement-drafter.yml file in your repository, announcement-drafter will not do anything
  3. To use images, videos, gifs etc., do not use relative links to a file in your repo. Instead drag/drop or paste the file into the markdown. The link generated should be to https://user-images.githubusercontent.com

App Configuration Options

These options should go in your repository's .github/announcement-drafter.yml file.

NameDescriptionRequiredExample
watch_foldersA list of what folders (relative paths) announcement-drafter should watch when new pull requests are open
  1. It is recommened to include the final / in the path
  2. announcement-drafter will also watch all subfolders unless you ignore them in ignore_folders
Yes[See demo config][announcement-drafter demo config]
ignore_foldersA list of what folders (relative paths) announcement-drafter should ignore when new pull requests are openNo[See demo config][announcement-drafter demo config]

Discussion Markdown

announcement-drafter needs to know certain information such as what repository or team to create the discussion in, and what the discussion category should be. This information should be provided in YAML metadata at the top of your markdown file.

Example

Example from demo repository:

<!--
author: philip-gai
repository: https://github.com/philip-gai/announcement-drafter-demo
category: announcements
-->

# Hello World! 👋

Hello beautiful world! 🌎

Metadata

NameDescriptionRequiredExample
authorThe author of the post. Should be your GitHub login (handle)Yesphilip-gai
repositoryThe full url to the repository to create the discussion in
Prerequisites:
  1. Discussions are enabled
  2. The app is installed on the repo
Conditional: Required if no team is providedhttps://github.com/philip-gai/announcement-drafter-demo
teamThe full url to the team to create the discussion in
Prerequisites:
  1. The app is installed on the team organization
Conditional: Required if no repository is providedhttps://github.com/orgs/elastico-group/teams/everyone
categoryThe name of the discussion categoryYesannouncements
Discussion TitleThe title of your discussion should be the first top-level header (i.e. # Discussion Title)YesSee Example
Discussion BodyThe body of your discussion is everything after the top-level headerYesSee Example

Workflow for reviewing and posting a new discussion

  1. Write your discussion post with with announcement-drafter discussion markdown
  2. Create a pull request
  3. announcement-drafter will comment on the discussion markdown file asking for approval from the author to post the discussions. It will also notify you of any validation erros.
    1. An approval requires the author to react (not reply) to the comment with a 🚀
    2. If there are errors, fix them and recreate a new pull request so announcement-drafter can revalidate (Will fix this - see issue #36)
  4. Receive feedback from your teammates
  5. Make updates
    1. These will not be revalidated by the bot unless you recreate the pull request. See #36
  6. Approve all the discussions you would like posted by reacting (not replying) with a 🚀
  7. If announcement-drafter bot asks, make sure to authenticate so it can post as the author and not as itself
  8. Merge the pull request
  9. announcement-drafter will create the discussion and reply to the comment with a link to the newly creating discussion
    1. If there were issues it will include them in the reply
      diff --git a/_apps/repost.md b/_apps/repost.md

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