feat: add issue assignee workflow

[kartikangiras]

Summary

This PR implements an automated workflow to unassign external contributors from help wanted issues if they have not opened a non-draft PR within 7 days of assignment. This ensures that stalled issues become available to other contributors and keeps the backlog moving. This workflow does not apply to the core maintainers and collaborators.

Details

1. Weekly scan of all open help wanted issues with assignees
2. Timeline analysis — reads issue timeline to determine:
   • Exact date assignee was assigned
   • Whether assignee has a non-draft PR
3. Decision logic:
   • Assigned < 7 days → no action
   • Has linked PR → no action
   • Assigned ≥ 7 days AND no non-draft PR → unassign + post comment
4. Friendly notification — comment explains reason and how to re-claim

Related Issues

fixes #21002

How to Validate

Pre-Merge Checklist

• Updated relevant documentation and README (if needed)
• Added/updated tests (if needed)
• Noted breaking changes (if any)
• Validated on required platforms/methods:
  • MacOS
    • npm run
    • npx
    • Docker
    • Podman
    • Seatbelt
  • Windows
    • npm run
    • npx
    • Docker
  • Linux
    • npm run
    • npx
    • Docker

[gemini-code-assist]

Summary of Changes

Hello, I'm Gemini Code Assist¹! I'm currently reviewing this pull request and will post my feedback shortly. In the meantime, here's a summary to help you and other reviewers quickly get up to speed!

This pull request introduces a new automated workflow designed to improve the efficiency of issue management by ensuring help wanted issues remain accessible. It automatically identifies and unassigns contributors who have been inactive for 30 days without a linked pull request, thereby preventing issues from stalling and encouraging faster resolution.

Highlights

• Automated Inactive Assignee Workflow: Implemented a new GitHub workflow to automatically unassign contributors from help wanted issues if they have not opened a linked pull request within 30 days of assignment.
• Workflow Logic and Schedule: The workflow runs weekly, scanning open help wanted issues. It determines assignment dates and checks for linked PRs, unassigning contributors who meet the inactivity criteria and posting a friendly notification.
• Contributor Guidance: Provided clear instructions for contributors on how to engage with the new automation, including opening draft PRs early, re-assigning themselves if mistakenly unassigned, and voluntarily unassigning themselves.

Changelog

• docs/issue-and-pr-automation.md
  • Added a new section detailing the 'Automatic unassignment of inactive contributors' workflow.
  • Updated the numbering of subsequent sections to accommodate the new entry.

Ignored Files

• Ignored by pattern: .github/workflows/** (1)
  • .github/workflows/unassign-inactive-assignees.yml

Activity

• No human activity has occurred on this pull request yet.

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[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request introduces a new GitHub Actions workflow to automatically unassign inactive contributors from 'help wanted' issues after 30 days, which is a great initiative to keep the issue backlog healthy. The change includes documentation for this new workflow in issue-and-pr-automation.md. The documentation is clear and well-structured, but I've noted one minor point of ambiguity regarding the time threshold that could be clarified to prevent confusion for contributors.

_{Note: Security Review has been skipped due to the limited scope of the PR.}

[kartikangiras]

@scidomino PTAL. I opened the issue and simultaneosuly opened a PR because I had a working workflow for this but was not assigned the help wanted tag so was not able to assign myself.

[scidomino]

Also, you have lint errors. Run the formatter.

[scidomino]

I think we need to change this to ignore draft PRs. Otherwise it will just encourage users to open no-op draft PRs to avoid getting unassigned. These help-wanted issues should not take more than a week to complete, or at least, even if they do, it should be broken up into multiple PRs such that the first one is ready in a week. Basically, we need to require users have a PR ready to review in a week and if not, we'll unassign them.

[kartikangiras]

@scidomino I have updated the workflow to only take non-draft PRs into account while checking the assignments.

[scidomino]

This is my last comment. Fix it and I will approve.

[scidomino]

Sorry. Please remove the "so the bot won't remove you again." since it's not true.