keepalive

Reusable GitHub Actions workflow that prevents scheduled workflows from being disabled after 60 days of repository inactivity.

GitHub disables a public repository's scheduled (cron) workflows once there have been no commits for 60 days. This workflow checks how long it has been since the last commit and, only when that exceeds a threshold, lands one empty commit on the default branch to reset the clock.

It pushes the commit through a pull request and merges it with the built-in GITHUB_TOKEN, so it works on repositories whose default branch requires pull requests. It needs no personal access token, no GitHub App, and no ruleset bypass.

Usage

Add a caller workflow to each repository:

name: keepalive

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 3 * * 1"
  workflow_dispatch:

permissions:
  contents: write
  pull-requests: write

jobs:
  keepalive:
    uses: feRpicoral/keepalive/.github/workflows/keepalive.yml@v1
    with:
      stale-days: 50

Run the caller at least once a week so a commit lands before the 60-day limit. A manual workflow_dispatch run when the repository is active is a safe no-op.

Each consuming repository must also allow Actions to open the pull request (Settings → Actions → General → "Allow GitHub Actions to create and approve pull requests"), or via the CLI:

gh api --method PUT repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/permissions/workflow \
  -f default_workflow_permissions=read \
  -F can_approve_pull_request_reviews=true

Inputs

Input	Default	Description
stale-days	50	Only act when the latest commit is older than this many days.
commit-message	chore: keepalive	Message for the empty commit.
pr-title	chore: keepalive	Title of the pull request.
pr-body	(see workflow)	Body of the pull request.
branch-prefix	keepalive	Prefix for the temporary branch (<prefix>/<run-id>).