GitHub Watcher

Polls GitHub notifications on a cron and escalates to your assistant only when there's new activity — an empty poll spends zero LLM tokens.

Prerequisites

• GitHub connected via OAuth. Verify with assistant oauth status.

Setup

bun scripts/setup.ts                    # poll every 15 minutes (default)
bun scripts/setup.ts --cron "*/5 * * * *"

This registers a script-mode schedule that runs scripts/poll.ts on the cron. On each fire the script polls; it only wakes the assistant when there is new activity.

How it works

• Deterministic poll, LLM only on new items. scripts/poll.ts calls assistant oauth request --provider github /notifications (the token stays in the daemon — it never enters the script), filters to review_requested / mention / assign / team_mention, and dedups against a cursor in the schedule's state/. No model call on an empty poll.
• Fenced escalation. When there's new activity it creates a fresh conversation and wakes it with the raw notification payload passed via --external-content (fenced as data, never instructions); the trusted framing is in --hint.
• Self-contained. Built-ins + the assistant CLI only — no dependencies.

Customizing

By default the schedule runs the shipped scripts/poll.ts in place, so it picks up skill updates. To customize (e.g. change ACTION_PROMPT or the notification filter), copy the script into the schedule's own dir and point the schedule at the copy:

cp scripts/poll.ts "$VELLUM_WORKSPACE_DIR/schedules/<id>/poll.ts"
assistant schedules update <id> --script 'cd "$VELLUM_WORKSPACE_DIR/schedules/$__SCHEDULE_ID" && bun poll.ts'

(setup.ts prints the <id>; or find it with assistant schedules list.) The copy is frozen — it won't receive future skill updates.

Notes

• Cursor state lives at schedules/<id>/state/ and is gitignored (the script writes a state/ .gitignore on first run); the schedule dir and that .gitignore are versioned, the cursor is not.
• Change the cadence later with assistant schedules update <id> --expression "<cron>"; pause with assistant schedules disable <id>.