/repo-topic-tagger — GitHub Topic Curation

Apply a curated, discoverability-optimized set of GitHub topics to one or more repositories.

Arguments

$ARGUMENTS

• <owner/repo> — one or more target repos (e.g. agentic-research/mache). If omitted, defaults to the repo containing the current working directory.
• --dry-run (default) — propose changes but do not apply. Always the default. The user must explicitly pass --apply to write.
• --apply — after presenting the proposal, prompt for approval and call gh api to write the new topic set.
• --max=N — cap proposed tag count at N (default 12; GitHub allows 20 max).

What this solves

Many of the user's public repos ship with zero topics. This kills discoverability:

• They never surface in GitHub's topic browser (github.com/topics/<x>)
• They never appear in "related repositories" cards
• LLM-based repo discovery tools weight topic metadata heavily
• Human searchers filtering by topic on GitHub never see them

Topics are cheap to set, never break anything, and compound over time as GitHub's index picks them up.

Reference: a good topic set

agentic-research/cloister is the canonical good example:

capnproto, cloudflare-workers, durable-objects, gateway,
hypervisor, mcp, model-context-protocol, rust, typescript, workerd

Why it works:

• Language(s): rust, typescript
• Framework / runtime: cloudflare-workers, workerd, durable-objects
• Substrate / protocol: capnproto, mcp, model-context-protocol
• Problem-space label: hypervisor, gateway

Ten tags, every one of them is something a real searcher would type.

GitHub topic rules (hard constraints)

The GitHub API will reject violations. Validate before submitting:

• Lowercase only
• Alphanumerics, hyphens, +, . allowed; no underscores, no spaces
• Each topic ≤ 50 chars
• ≤ 20 topics per repo
• Convention: prefer hyphens (code-intelligence, not codeintelligence)

Workflow

Phase 1: Inventory

For each target repo:

gh repo view <owner/repo> --json name,description,repositoryTopics,visibility,isFork,isArchived,homepageUrl,primaryLanguage,languages

Skip with a printed reason if:

• visibility != PUBLIC (unless user explicitly overrides)
• isFork == true
• isArchived == true

Phase 2: Signal gathering

For each remaining repo, collect signals from the codebase (use gh for remote; if a local clone is available, prefer reading files directly):

1. Language metadata — primaryLanguage and the languages map. The top 1–3 languages are almost always topics.
2. Package manifests — detect framework signals:
   • Cargo.toml → rust, plus notable deps (tokio, axum, serde, tree-sitter, wasmtime, …)
   • package.json → typescript or nodejs, plus framework deps (next, react, hono, workerd, vite, …)
   • go.mod → go, plus deps (cobra, bubbletea, cgo, tree-sitter, …)
   • pyproject.toml / requirements.txt → python, plus deps (fastapi, pytorch, transformers, …)
   • flake.nix / shell.nix → nix
   • Dockerfile / docker-compose.yml → docker
   • apko.yaml / melange.yaml → apko, chainguard
   • .github/workflows/* → CI signals (usually not topic-worthy alone)
3. README + description — extract domain nouns. Look specifically for:
   • Protocol names (mcp, lsp, oauth, webauthn, cms, pkcs7)
   • System category (cli, tui, library, framework, daemon, mcp-server)
   • Problem-space (observability, vulnerability-scanning, code-intelligence, identity, signing, knowledge-graph)
4. Project family / org context — the user's ecosystems. If repo is in agentic-research, propose agentic-research and art-ecosystem. If in jamestexas and references rosary/mache/ley-line, propose art-ecosystem.
5. Existing topics — keep, don't fight. Only remove if actively misleading.

Phase 3: Proposal

Produce a structured proposal per repo:

## <owner/repo>

Description: <current description>
Current topics: <list or "(none)">

Proposed topics (N total):
  Language:   rust, typescript
  Framework:  cloudflare-workers, workerd, durable-objects
  Protocol:   capnproto, mcp, model-context-protocol
  Domain:     hypervisor, gateway
  Ecosystem:  agentic-research, art-ecosystem

Add:    [list]
Remove: [list, or "(none)"]
Keep:   [list]

Rationale: <1–2 sentences>

Rationale rules:

• Add ≤ --max (default 12). Quality beats quantity.
• Prefer canonical names — model-context-protocol over mcp-protocol, cloudflare-workers over cf-workers. Check https://github.com/topics/<x> exists if uncertain.
• Avoid singletons that only describe this one repo. Topics are for finding kin.
• Avoid promotional adjectives — no fast, modern, lightweight unless they're an established topic (high-performance is borderline; usually skip).

Phase 4: Approval

Print the full proposal across all in-scope repos. Then:

• If --dry-run (default): stop. Output a hint that the user can re-run with --apply to write.
• If --apply: print "Apply these N topic changes? (yes/no)" and wait. Only proceed on explicit affirmative.

Phase 5: Apply

For each approved repo:

gh api -X PUT "repos/<owner>/<repo>/topics" \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.mercy-preview+json" \
  --input - <<EOF
{"names": ["tag1", "tag2", "..."]}
EOF

Or equivalently with field args:

gh api -X PUT "repos/<owner>/<repo>/topics" \
  -f "names[]=tag1" -f "names[]=tag2" ...

After each call:

• Re-read with gh repo view <owner/repo> --json repositoryTopics to confirm
• Report success or failure with the exact diff that landed

Phase 6: Report

End with a compact summary:

Applied:
  agentic-research/mache       — +8 topics, -0
  agentic-research/rosary      — +9 topics, -0
  jamestexas/agents            — +5 topics, -0
Skipped:
  agentic-research/x-ray       — empty repo, no signals to tag
  agentic-research/.github     — meta-repo, not user-facing
Deferred (no signals / needs human input):
  jamestexas/papers            — unclear scope

Important rules

• Default to --dry-run. The user must explicitly opt in to writes. Topics are public and indexed by third parties.
• One PR-equivalent per repo per pass. Don't bundle topic changes with description or README rewrites — those are separate skills.
• Do not touch private repos unless the user explicitly names them. They get no discoverability benefit.
• Do not touch forks or archived repos unless explicitly named.
• If a repo has a working topic set (≥ 5 tags spanning ≥ 3 categories), leave it alone unless the user asked to revise it.
• No emoji in topics. GitHub strips them silently and they're not searchable.

Examples

/repo-topic-tagger agentic-research/mache
→ dry-run proposal for mache only

/repo-topic-tagger agentic-research/mache agentic-research/rosary --apply
→ proposal for both, then prompts for approval, then writes

/repo-topic-tagger
→ uses current working directory's GitHub remote (derived via `gh repo view`)

Bulk mode (orgs)

For a whole-org sweep:

gh repo list <owner> --limit 100 --json name,visibility,isFork,isArchived,repositoryTopics \
  | jq -r '.[] | select(.visibility=="PUBLIC" and .isFork==false and .isArchived==false) | .name'

Iterate, but produce all proposals first, present them as a single document, and only apply after a single batched approval. Do not stream-apply.