taken?

One question, answered before you volunteer for a GitHub issue:
is it already taken?

GitHub shows "linked a pull request" events in the issue timeline, but never in the comments. You can read every comment on an issue and still miss that someone already opened a PR for it. taken? checks the timeline, scans comments for people claiming the work, looks at assignees, reads CONTRIBUTING.md for AI contribution policies, and checks whether the repo is still active. Then it gives a verdict, with the evidence cited.

Install

You need Python 3.10+ and the GitHub CLI (gh), authenticated. taken? only makes read-only API calls through your own gh login. It never sees or stores tokens, and it never writes anything to GitHub.

git clone https://github.com/RogueAlg0/taken.git
cd taken
uv run taken owner/repo#123

Or install it as a tool from PyPI and skip the clone:

uv tool install taken-gh
taken owner/repo#123

Usage

uv run taken owner/repo#123
uv run taken https://github.com/owner/repo/issues/123

# flags
uv run taken owner/repo#123 --json        # full findings as JSON
uv run taken owner/repo#123 --me mylogin  # ignore your own comments

Exit codes: 0 means GO, 1 means TAKEN, 2 means CAUTION, 3 means something broke.

How the verdict works

TAKEN wins over CAUTION, which wins over GO.

TAKEN: the issue is closed, an open PR links to it, or someone is assigned.
CAUTION: a comment says someone wants it (soft claim, they may have moved on), a linked PR was merged but the issue is still open, the repo has an AI policy to respect, or the repo looks inactive.
GO: none of the above.

The claimant scan is a heuristic over comment text, not proof. The verdict always prints its evidence so you can judge for yourself.

Example

$ uv run taken Exodus-Privacy/exodus#300
taken? Exodus-Privacy/exodus#300
verdict: TAKEN
  ...
  why:
    - open PR #700 already covers this:
      https://github.com/Exodus-Privacy/exodus/pull/700