GitHub Automation Bot

An event-driven bot that reacts to GitHub activity and acts on it — adding labels, posting comments, and sending Slack notifications — based on rules you configure in a dashboard.

What it does

1. Sign in with GitHub and connect repositories via a GitHub App installation.
2. GitHub delivers webhooks to the bot when issues are opened, pull requests are created, or code is pushed.
3. The bot evaluates your configured rules against each event and runs the matching actions: add a label, post a comment, send a Slack message.
4. A live dashboard shows every event received and every action taken, with failure history and retry status.

Architecture

• Backend: Node + Express on Render. Webhook receiver persists events immediately and ACKs 200; a background worker handles rule evaluation and external calls with exponential-backoff retry.
• Frontend: React + Vite + Tailwind on Vercel. Polls the event/action log every 4s.
• Database: Neon Postgres via Prisma. Stores users, installations, repos, rules, events, and action logs.
• Auth: GitHub App (JWT + installation tokens) for webhook delivery and write-back; GitHub OAuth for user sign-in; our own short-lived JWT for dashboard sessions.

Run locally

Prerequisites

• Node 18+
• A Neon Postgres database
• A GitHub App configured (see below)
• A Slack Incoming Webhook URL
• smee.io or ngrok to proxy GitHub webhooks to localhost

Backend

cd backend
cp .env.example .env
# fill in all values in .env
npm install
node node_modules/prisma/build/index.js migrate deploy
npm run dev

Start a webhook proxy (in a separate terminal):

npx smee-client --url https://smee.io/<your-channel> --target http://localhost:3000/webhook/github

Set the GitHub App's webhook URL to your smee.io channel URL during local dev.

Frontend

cd frontend
cp .env.example .env
# set VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:3000
npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:5173.

Environment variables

See backend/.env.example for the full list with descriptions. Key variables:

Variable	Description
DATABASE_URL	Neon pooled Postgres connection string
JWT_SECRET	Random secret for signing session JWTs
GITHUB_APP_ID	Numeric App ID from GitHub App settings
GITHUB_APP_PRIVATE_KEY_BASE64	Base64-encoded .pem private key
GITHUB_APP_CLIENT_ID	OAuth client ID (user sign-in)
GITHUB_APP_CLIENT_SECRET	OAuth client secret
GITHUB_APP_WEBHOOK_SECRET	Shared secret for HMAC signature verification
GITHUB_APP_SLUG	App slug for the installation link
SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL	Incoming webhook URL from Slack

Frontend: VITE_API_URL — public URL of the deployed backend.

Deployment

• Backend: Render web service, root directory backend, build command npm install && node node_modules/prisma/build/index.js generate && node node_modules/prisma/build/index.js migrate deploy, start node index.js.
• Frontend: Vercel, root directory frontend, env var VITE_API_URL=<render-url>.
• Keep-alive: GitHub Actions cron (.github/workflows/keepalive.yml) pings /health every 10 minutes to prevent Render free-tier sleep.

Live URL: https://prateek-gh-bot.vercel.app

Testing

Happy path

1. Open an issue in a connected repo with title containing bug.
2. If you have a rule: event type issues, match field title, match type contains, match value bug, action add label: bug + slack — the bot should add the label and post to Slack within ~4 seconds.
3. Dashboard shows the event as done and the actions as success.

Idempotency

Go to the GitHub App → Advanced → find the delivery → Redeliver. The label is not added again; the dashboard still shows one action entry.

Forged webhook

curl -X POST https://github-automation-bot-pw55.onrender.com/webhook/github \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "X-GitHub-Event: issues" \
  -H "X-GitHub-Delivery: fake-id" \
  -H "X-Hub-Signature-256: sha256=invalidsignature" \
  -d '{"action":"opened"}'

Returns 401. Nothing persisted.

Failure + retry

Set SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL to an invalid URL in Render env vars. Open an issue that matches a slack rule. Dashboard shows action failed, attempts increment on each worker tick. Fix the URL — next retry succeeds.

Auth gate

Remove the token from localStorage (or make a request without Authorization header). API returns 403; dashboard redirects to /login.

Demo repo

Point the GitHub App at any repo you own. Create a rule matching issues / title / contains / bug with label + Slack actions, open an issue titled bug: something — full flow completes in under 5 seconds.