If you've ever thought, "wouldn't it be cool if GitHub could…"; imma stop you right there. Most features can actually be added via GitHub Apps, which extend GitHub and can be installed directly on organizations and user accounts and granted access to specific repositories. They come with granular permissions and built-in webhooks. Apps are first class actors within GitHub.
Probot is a framework for building GitHub Apps in Node.js. GitHub Apps can listen to webhook events sent by a repository or organization. Probot uses its internal event emitter to perform actions based on those events. A simple Probot App might look like this:
module.exports = robot => {
robot.on('issues.opened', async context => {
const issueComment = context.issue({ body: 'Thanks for opening this issue!' })
return context.github.issues.createComment(issueComment)
})
}Check out some of the featured apps or read the docs to learn more about writing a new app.
Probot is built by people just like you! Most of the interesting things are built with Probot, so consider starting by writing a new app or improving one of the existing ones, and check out our contributing docs for other ways to get started.
Want to chat with Probot users and contributors? Join us in Slack!
Have an idea for a cool new GitHub App (built with Probot)? That's great! If you want feedback, help, or just to share it with the world you can do so by creating an issue in the probot/ideas repository!
Probot is super excited to be participating in Rails Girls Summer of Code & Google Summer of Code! We've written some documentation on how to get started if you're part of one of these programs.