Upstream Recon

Investigate a repo’s culture and existing threads before interacting. Prevents duplicate issues, wasted PR effort, and uninformed comments.

Arguments: <owner/repo> [topic-keyword]

Procedure

Use gh CLI throughout. Run independent queries in parallel.

1. Repo metadata — stars, forks, license, last push date, archived status
2. Top 10 contributors — commit counts. Is it one person with 90%+ commits?
3. Existing issues search — search open AND closed issues for the topic keyword. Check for duplicates, prior art, and maintainer responses. Report what was found.
4. Recent 30 PRs (all states) — get the lay of the land
5. Merged PRs (last 20) — who merges them? How fast? What types get accepted?
6. Closed-without-merge PRs (last 50, filter mergedAt == null) — deep-dive 2-3 notable rejections: read comments for maintainer reasoning
7. Open PRs — how many sit with 0 reviews? For how long?
8. Topic deep-dive (if keyword given) — read comments on 2-3 most relevant existing issues/PRs to understand maintainer sentiment and community workarounds

Analysis Dimensions

• Governance: Solo maintainer / small team / community-driven
• External PR reception: Welcoming / selective (bugs yes, features no) / closed shop
• Issue responsiveness: How fast do maintainers respond to issues? Do they engage or auto-close?
• Merge velocity: Days from open to merge for external contributors
• Rejection patterns: Ghosted? “Building it myself”? “File issue first”? Bot auto-closed?
• Topic overlap: Has this been attempted or discussed before? Active workarounds?

Recommendation

End the report with one of:

• MERGE-LIKELY — project merges external feature PRs, no competing work, maintainer receptive
• MERGE-UNLIKELY — maintainer builds features themselves, similar PRs closed/ignored, feature contradicts direction
• FILE-ISSUE-FIRST — feature not yet discussed, maintainer is selective but responsive to issues, gauge interest before coding
• COMMENT-ON-EXISTING — existing issue/PR already covers this, add your workaround or +1 there instead
• DUPLICATE-EXISTS — exact issue already filed, do not create another

Include concrete next steps (e.g., “comment on #13738 with your workaround”, “start with a bug fix PR to build credibility”, “file an issue referencing #189”, “fork and maintain independently”).