oss-welcome

name	oss-welcome
description	Welcome first-time contributors who open a PR or issue. Detects whether the author has contributed before and posts a friendly greeting if not. Use whenever the user says "welcome new contributors", "greet first-timers", "check for new contributors", or when reviewing a new PR or issue and wanting to acknowledge first-time contributors.

OSS Welcome

Identify first-time contributors on open PRs and issues, and post a welcome comment to each one.

Step 1 — Find recently opened PRs and issues

# PRs opened in the last 7 days
gh pr list --state open --json number,title,author,createdAt --limit 50

# Issues opened in the last 7 days
gh issue list --state open --json number,title,author,createdAt --limit 50

Filter to items created within the last 7 days (or pass $ARGUMENTS as a date range like --since 2024-01-01).

Step 2 — Check if each author is a first-time contributor

For each unique author, check their contribution history on this repo:

# Check merged PRs by this author
gh pr list --state merged --author "<username>" --limit 1 --json number

# Check if they've opened issues before
gh issue list --state all --author "<username>" --limit 2 --json number

An author is a first-time contributor if they have:

• No merged PRs, AND
• This is their first or second issue/PR (they haven't been around long)

If the API doesn't return enough data, use:

gh api /repos/{owner}/{repo}/commits?author=<username>&per_page=1

Skip bots (usernames ending in [bot] or containing -bot).

Step 3 — Post a welcome comment

For a first-time PR contributor:

Welcome, and thanks for your first contribution! 🎉

We'll review this PR soon. In the meantime, make sure tests pass and feel free to ask if you have questions.

For a first-time issue author:

Thanks for opening your first issue! We'll take a look soon. If you're interested in fixing this yourself, let us know — we're happy to guide you through the codebase.

Post the comment:

gh pr comment <number> --body "..."
gh issue comment <number> --body "..."

Keep the tone warm but short. Don't over-explain or add a wall of links.

Step 4 — Optionally suggest a good-first-issue

If the issue author expressed interest in contributing (e.g. "I'd love to fix this"), find an open good-first-issue and mention it:

gh issue list --label "good-first-issue" --state open --limit 5 --json number,title,url

Add a line to the comment:

If you're looking for something to pick up, here are some good starting points: #N (title), #N (title).

Step 5 — Report

Welcomed N first-time contributors:
  - @username on PR #N / issue #N
  - ...