GitHub said 31 issues were open. 0 were actually free. So I built Unclaimed for my best friend

Description and use

Unclaimed automatically identifies truly free good‑first issues in repositories using the GitHub API and Gemma 3 4B, saving developers time.

Problem

Finding truly unclaimed good‑first issues in busy repos is hard because GitHub still shows them as open even when they have PRs, comments, or are marked not ready.

Outcome

Unclaimed reduced the effort to find free issues from opening dozens of tabs to a single query, correctly identifying all 8 hand‑checked issues and providing proof for each classification.

Workflow

• Query GitHub API for open issues with the chosen label
• Check assignees, linked pull requests, and "not ready" banner
• If any hard block exists, mark verdict without model
• Otherwise, run Gemma 3 4B on the issue thread via Ollama
• Parse Gemma output into structured JSON with claims, summaries, and difficulty
• Display results with proof links

Evidence

GitHub still shows it as open.

Source

GitHub's own search for open, unassigned good first issues in kestra-io/kestra returned 31 issues.

Source

21 already had a pull request (one had three)

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Unclaimed checks all of that for you.

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Gemma 3 4B, running in Ollama on our own small server, reads the issue and its latest comments and returns structured JSON

Source

I checked it against 8 real issues I had read by hand, and it got all 8 right.

Source