Your good first issue queue might be lying to contributors — so I built StarterQueue

Description and use

StarterQueue audits repositories for good first issues, flagging problems like assignment, inactivity, dependencies, and open PRs that will close the issue.

Problem

Good first issue labels can mislead contributors because they do not reflect current issue status such as assignment, inactivity, dependencies, or open pull requests that will close the issue.

Outcome

In a test on rust-lang/rust-clippy, StarterQueue audited 117 issues and reported 2 PASS, 76 WARN, and 39 FAIL, revealing that 115 issues had at least one actionable signal.

Workflow

• 1. Run starterqueue audit or launch the TUI with starterqueue
• 2. Enter repository owner/repo
• 3. Audit engine queries GitHub for issue state, assignments, activity, dependencies, PRs, milestones, and lock status
• 4. Rules SQ001–SQ009 evaluate each issue
• 5. Results are categorized as PASS, WARN, or FAIL
• 6. Users browse results, filter by severity, view detailed findings, and jump to issues in the browser

Evidence

StarterQueue currently has nine rules, each with a stable code from SQ001 to SQ009.

Source

The audit found: 2 PASS, 76 WARN, and 39 FAIL out of 117 issues.

Source

StarterQueue is read-only. It doesn't remove labels, close issues, assign contributors, post comments, or try to “clean up” a repository automatically.

Source

StarterQueue can also run automatically as a GitHub Action.

Source