Bug: stale action interacts with Discussions converted from issues

[cnavarro-prestashop]

Description:
The action posts stale comments and applies stale labels on GitHub Discussions that were converted from issues, even though the conversion happened before the action ran. The action should never interact with Discussions.

Action version:
actions/stale@v10

Platform:

• Ubuntu
• macOS
• Windows

Runner type:

• Hosted
• Self-hosted

Repro steps:

1. Have an open issue with no recent activity
2. Convert that issue to a Discussion via GitHub's "Convert to discussion" feature
3. Run actions/stale on the repository
4. The action posts a stale comment and applies the stale label on the Discussion

Real-world example: PrestaShop/PrestaShop#41076 (comment)

Expected behavior:
The action should only process open issues (and optionally PRs). Discussions — including those converted from issues — should be completely ignored.

Actual behavior:
The action comments on and labels Discussions that were previously issues. The root cause is likely that the action uses GitHub's GraphQL search API, which still indexes converted discussions and returns them in issue search results. Since Discussions also support comments and labels via GraphQL, the action interacts with them unintentionally.

Note: the REST API endpoint GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues does not return converted discussions, so filtering on item type or switching to that endpoint would likely fix the issue.

Workaround found:
We'll add a label Converted from issue to add in exempt-issue-labels as a quick fix.

[chiranjib-swain]

Hi, @cnavarro-prestashop
Thank you for raising this. We’ll look into it and share an update as soon as we have more information.

[chiranjib-swain]

Hi @cnavarro-prestashop ,

Thanks for the detailed report and example.

We checked our stale workflow and it uses the REST endpoint GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues, which only returns Issues and PRs, not Discussions—including those created via “Convert to discussion”. So the stale job shouldn’t be able to target a Discussion directly.

For your example:

PrestaShop/PrestaShop#26638 → discussions/41076, the github-actions[bot] comment likely comes from the original issue and was preserved during conversion, not added afterward.

If you’re seeing new stale comments/labels after conversion, could you share:

1. the Actions run link, and/or
2. timestamps (conversion vs. stale activity)

That’ll help confirm if anything is still acting post-conversion or if it’s just migrated content.

[cnavarro-prestashop]

Hi @chiranjib-swain,

Thanks for your complete answer. Indeed for my example : you're right, Stale action added the label and after that it was converted into discussion, my bad.

I don't have other examples because unfortunately we removed all Stale labels and comments related. We also "fixed" the issue by adding a label "Converted into Discussion" and ignore it for Stale action.

Thanks for your help, I'll keep you informed if I encounter the problem again.