community-digest-action

A weekly heartbeat for your repo.

Automates weekly "what happened" posts so contributors feel seen—without you writing newsletters.

Posts a clean weekly digest to GitHub Discussions so your community stays in the loop without you playing newsletter editor.

• No-AI required (default)
• Anti-spam: skips weeks with low activity
• Drop-in GitHub Action (copy/paste and go)
• Shoutouts for new contributors (because people are the point)

Above: a real digest post from this Action running on agent-instructions-kit.

Live example: Weekly Digest — 2026-01-14

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Example Output

Here's what gets posted to your Discussions:

# Weekly Digest — 2026-01-07 to 2026-01-14

## Merged Pull Requests

- [#142](https://github.com/you/repo/pull/142) Add dark mode support — [@alice](https://github.com/alice)
- [#139](https://github.com/you/repo/pull/139) Fix memory leak in parser — [@bob](https://github.com/bob)
- [#137](https://github.com/you/repo/pull/137) Update dependencies — [@charlie](https://github.com/charlie)

## New Contributors

Welcome to our newest contributors! Thank you for your first contribution.

- [@alice](https://github.com/alice) in [#142](https://github.com/you/repo/pull/142)

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*3 PRs merged • 1 new contributor*

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*Generated by [community-digest-action](https://github.com/malmichaels-gif/community-digest-action) — [give it a star](https://github.com/malmichaels-gif/community-digest-action) if you find it useful!*

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Quickstart (5 minutes)

1. Create a GitHub Discussion category where you want the digest to land Example: Weekly Updates

2. Add this workflow:

name: Weekly Community Digest

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 16 * * 1" # Mondays 16:00 UTC (pick your time)
  workflow_dispatch: {}

permissions:
  contents: read
  pull-requests: read
  discussions: write

jobs:
  digest:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: malmichaels-gif/community-digest-action@v0
        with:
          discussion_category: "Weekly Updates"

That's it. Next run posts a digest.

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Configuration

Inputs

Input	Default	Description
discussion_category	(required)	Discussion category name to post into
since_days	7	Lookback window
max_prs	10	Max merged PRs to include
max_new_contributors	10	Max first-time contributors to shout out
min_activity	3	Skip posting if activity is below this threshold
dry_run	false	Don't post, just log the markdown
footer_star_link	true	Add "Generated by..." footer with a star link

Example (anti-spam tuned)

- uses: malmichaels-gif/community-digest-action@v0
  with:
    discussion_category: "Weekly Updates"
    since_days: "7"
    min_activity: "5"
    max_prs: "7"
    max_new_contributors: "7"

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How it decides to skip a week

We calculate an "activity count" roughly like:

• merged PRs + new contributors (+ v0.2: issues/release activity)

If the count is < min_activity, we skip posting.

No one needs a weekly "nothing happened" post. That's how tools get removed.

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Permissions

This action needs:

• contents: read for repo metadata
• pull-requests: read to list merged PRs
• discussions: write to post the digest

It does not need admin permissions or issue access. Keep it boring.

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Known Limitations

• Requires GitHub Discussions enabled on the repo
• Discussion category must exist before first run
• Skips posting if activity is below min_activity threshold (this is intentional)
• v0.x only covers merged PRs + new contributors (issues/releases in v0.2)

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Privacy & safety

• The action never reads secrets.
• dry_run is there so you can see output before posting.
• We intentionally keep output high-level (titles + links), not giant quoted bodies.

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Versioning

• @v0 — stable channel, recommended for most users
• @v0.1.0 — pinned to exact release
• @<commit-sha> — pinned forever

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Contributing

Please do. See CONTRIBUTING.md. Agent instructions live in AGENTS.md.

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Roadmap (kept intentionally small)

• v0.2: optional Issues mode
• v0.2: optional "Help wanted" section
• v0.3: optional AI "voice" (still works without AI)
• v1.0: stable config + formatting guarantees

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License

MIT.

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Built by HeyTC.