issue-triage

Issue triage

Triages and refines an issue in a single pass. It classifies the issue type, validates the description against a quality bar, rewrites the description when it needs it, and applies labels. It reads CODEOWNERS and the issue's links to infer ownership and area. When it rewrites, it preserves valid allowed-domain links and meaningful uncertainty from the author. Repo-specific team mapping and label rules are supplied through the additional-instructions input.

The workflow accepts issue content from public community contributors as untrusted input. Its GitHub tools use min-integrity: none so community-authored issues can be triaged, while all writes remain constrained by the configured safe outputs. Findings-only runs update a marker-delimited managed block and never replace the author's full issue body.

For the same logic running automatically when an issue is opened, see issue-auto-triage.

Triggers

Event	Description
/triage	Slash command on an issue comment.
/triage undo	Restores the description from the snapshot taken before the last rewrite.
workflow_dispatch	Manual trigger.

Install

mkdir -p .github/workflows && curl -sL \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/docs-actions/v1/agentic-workflows/issue-triage/example.yml \
  -o .github/workflows/docs-triage.yml

Add permissions.copilot-requests: write to the caller workflow. You do not need to pass COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN for the default built-in auth path.

Inputs

Input	Type	Required	Default	Description
additional-instructions	string	No	""	Team mapping, label rules, CODEOWNERS paths.
setup-commands	string	No	""	Shell commands to run before the agent starts.

Safe outputs

Output	Max	Description
add-labels	6	Apply classification labels and any team or area labels that already exist in the repo.
remove-labels	1	Remove needs-team once the issue has been triaged, when that label exists.
add-comment	1	Ask the author for missing information when the issue needs a human.
update-issue	1	Record a triage findings block and, when appropriate, a refined description.

Classification labels for add-labels: triaged, human-needed, bug, enhancement, question, and documentation. The workflow also allows the Team:* and cross-team labels for routing. It only applies labels that already exist in the target repository, and it never invents labels.

How it works

1. On a /triage undo comment, it restores the previous description from the hidden snapshot and stops.
2. Otherwise it reads the issue, its comments, any linked issues or files, and CODEOWNERS.
3. It classifies the issue type and validates the body against the quality bar (required sections, blocking ambiguity, and cross-references).
4. When the description needs refinement and enough author-supplied information is present, it rewrites the main content, keeping a hidden snapshot of the previous version for /triage undo.
5. It applies triaged plus the best-fit classification and team or area labels, removes needs-team when present, and records a findings block in the issue body via update_issue.

Example

The example.yml includes a sample team mapping via additional-instructions. Customize the mapping for your repo's team structure.