Duplicate Issue Detector

Check whether a newly opened issue is a duplicate of, or highly related to, an existing open or previously closed issue, and notify the reporter.

Workflow source: gh-aw-duplicate-issue-detector.md

How it works

When a new issue is opened, a prescan step fetches the newest 500 and oldest 500 issues (number, title, state) into a local index file, then de-duplicates any overlap between those ranges. The agent then scans this index for obvious title matches before running targeted search queries against both open and closed issues. Posts a notice on the issue when a strong duplicate match is found, or a lighter "highly related" notice when issues are closely related but distinct.

Quick Install

mkdir -p .github/workflows && curl -sL \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/ai-github-actions/v0/gh-agent-workflows/duplicate-issue-detector/example.yml \
  -o .github/workflows/duplicate-issue-detector.yml

Trigger

Event	Types
issues	opened

Inputs

Input	Description	Required	Default
additional-instructions	Repo-specific instructions appended to the agent prompt	No	""
allowed-bot-users	Allowlisted bot actor usernames (comma-separated)	No	github-actions[bot]
detect-related-issues	Set to "false" to skip detection of highly related (but not duplicate) issues	No	"true"

Safe Outputs

• add-comment — post a duplicate or highly-related notice on the issue when a matching issue is found

Example Workflow

name: Duplicate Issue Detector
on:
  issues:
    types: [opened]

permissions:
  contents: read
  discussions: write
  issues: write
  pull-requests: read

jobs:
  run:
    uses: elastic/ai-github-actions/.github/workflows/gh-aw-duplicate-issue-detector.lock.yml@v0
    secrets:
      COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN }}