Automate a weekly pull request digest
On Friday someone scrolls the merged list, tries to remember what each pull request did, and writes a few lines for the rest of the company. As a standing job it runs weekly: engineering reads what merged, product checks that each line says what the change does for users, and you approve the digest before anyone else sees it.
What you get
Sample, not live data. The repository, people and pull requests below are invented to show the shape of the digest.
Week of 12 to 16 January: acme/web (10 pull requests merged, 9 in the digest)
Headline: CSV export is here, and the timezone bug that shifted reports by a day is fixed.
New
- CSV export on the reports page (#412). Any report can now be downloaded as a CSV. Large reports are exported in the background and arrive by email.
Improved
- Faster dashboard load (#415). The dashboard fetches its charts together instead of one at a time.
Fixed
- Reports no longer shift by a day for users west of UTC (#409). The date range now uses the account's timezone.
- Password reset links work on the second click (#418).
Behind the scenes
- Build tool upgrade (#401), test suite split into two jobs (#420), three dependency bumps (#416, #417, #421).
Checked by product
- Moved #418 from "behind the scenes" to "fixed": the diff changes what a user sees.
- Reworded #415: the title said "10x faster", the description gives no measurement. The digest says "faster".
- 1 merged pull request left out by label (#419, marked internal).
How it runs
- 1Research
Reads the repositories you name, through an integration written against the GitHub API, built for you. Lists pull requests merged since the last digest, with title, description, labels, author and the files touched.
- 2Research
Drafts the digest: a short paragraph per change that says what is different now, grouped as new, improved, fixed and behind the scenes. Pull requests from bots or carrying a label you choose are left out.
- 3Product
Checks the draft against each pull request. Confirms every line matches the description and the files changed, moves anything that users would notice out of "behind the scenes", flags titles that promise more than the diff shows, and lists merged pull requests the draft left out.
- 4StrategyCross-check
Hands you the checked digest with a one-line headline. You approve it, edit it or drop it; nothing is posted or emailed to anyone until you do.
Questions
It asks GitHub for merged pull requests since the time of the last digest. GitHub search supports a merged date qualifier, for example merged:>=2026-01-09, so the job asks for pull requests merged on or after that day and drops any already covered. Anything merged after the read goes into next week.