PRoctr - Doctor/Triage for your open Pull Requests

proctr is a terminal UI for triaging open pull/merge requests across many GitHub, GitLab, and Gitea repositories at once. Its prime use case is managing automated dependency-update PRs (Renovate, Dependabot, or similar bots), but it works for any PR/MR matched by a label and/or branch-name prefix — including hand-written ones, if you follow a consistent convention. It reads a simple YAML project registry, fetches matching PRs/MRs concurrently, and lets you review, merge, and jump into repos without leaving the terminal.

Columns

The table shows a few independent signals per PR/MR, color-coded where the forge can tell reliably:

• Mergeable — whether the forge sees a merge conflict or unmet approval rule (e.g. MERGEABLE/CONFLICTING). This does not reflect CI outcome.
• Pipeline — the CI/pipeline outcome for the PR's head commit (e.g. success/failed/running, or N/A if the repo has no CI). For GitLab and Gitea this requires a follow-up API call per PR to fetch, since the list endpoints don't expose it directly. GitHub's BLOCKED state (e.g. unmet required reviews or status checks) is treated as a failure here too.
• Review — the PR's review decision (e.g. APPROVED/REVIEW_REQUIRED/CHANGES_REQUESTED), shown as plain None when empty. GitHub exposes this directly (reviewDecision); Gitea derives it from the PR's reviews plus the base branch's required-approval count (one extra API call each); GitLab doesn't expose an equivalent today.

A PR is only color-coded ready when Mergeable and Pipeline are both favorable; see the Gitea note below for where this can't be determined with full confidence.

Features

• Cross-repo overview — one table showing every open PR/MR matching your configured label(s) and/or branch prefix(es) (e.g. Renovate, Dependabot, or a custom convention) across all your repos, with age, mergeable state, pipeline status, and (on GitHub) review decision color-coded at a glance (where the forge can tell reliably — see the Gitea note below).
• Multi-forge, multi-instance — mix GitHub, GitLab, and Gitea repos in one registry, including multiple self-hosted GitLab or Gitea instances at once, each with its own credentials.
• Multi-select merge — tick PRs with space and merge them all with m; failures don't block the rest, and you get a summary afterward.
• Multi-select approve — tick PRs with space and approve them all with a; failures don't block the rest, and you get a summary afterward.
• Jump to context — open a PR in your browser (o) or drop into a shell at its local checkout (s), with your GitHub token already exported into the shell environment.
• Configurable — merge method, detection labels, sort order, and the project registry path are all overridable via a TOML config file.
• Concurrent fetching — all repos are queried in parallel via a thread pool, so refreshing dozens of repos takes seconds, not minutes.

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• One CLI per forge you actually use:
  • GitHub CLI (gh), authenticated or provided a token via config/env (see below)
  • GitLab CLI (glab), authenticated or provided via token in config/env (see below)
  • Gitea CLI (tea), must be pre-authenticated yourself via tea login add (see the Gitea note below)

Installation

Requires at least Python 3.11.

With pipx:

pipx install proctr

With uv:

uv tool install proctr

With pip:

pip install proctr

From source

git clone https://github.com/mxmehl/proctr.git
cd proctr
uv sync --no-dev

Quick start

1. Create a project registry — a YAML file listing the repos to monitor:

   root_path: ~/Git  # optional; overrides the default local clone root. Default: ~/Git
   myprojects:
     github:
       my-tool: # Expected local path: ~/Git/github/my-tool
         forge: github
         url: https://github.com/myuser/my-tool
     personal:
       proctr:
         forge: github
         url: https://github.com/mxmehl/proctr
         path: ~/Git/others/proctr  # optional; override the default local path
       my-blog: # Expected local path: ~/Git/personal/my-blog
         forge: gitea
         url: https://myowngit.example.com/myuser/my-blog
     work:
       internal-service:
         forge: gitlab
         url: https://company.example.com/team/internal-service

   Repos are grouped by an arbitrary top-level key (e.g. github, work); this key also determines the local checkout path convention <root_path>/<group>/<project>, used by the "open shell" action. root_path defaults to ~/Git if omitted. forge must be github, gitlab, or gitea. If your local clones don't follow that convention, set an optional path on the project to use an explicit local path instead, e.g. path: ~/code/my-tool.

   Save this file somewhere (e.g. ~/myprojects.yaml) and point to it in your config file (see below).

2. Provide token for your forges (e.g. GitHub), in order of precedence:

   • GITHUB_TOKEN / GITLAB_TOKEN environment variable, or
   • [github].token_command ([gitea.*/gitlab.*].token_command respectively) in the config file — a command that prints the token to stdout, e.g. a password manager CLI, or
   • [github].token ([gitea.*/gitlab.*].token respectively) in the config file (plaintext), or
   • fall back to gh/glab/tea's own stored authentication.

3. Run it:

   proctr

   Or preview the UI with canned sample data (no config/credentials/repos needed), e.g. for screenshots:

   proctr --demo

Configuration

proctr reads an optional TOML config file at your platform's user config directory (e.g. ~/Library/Application Support/proctr/config.toml on macOS, ~/.config/proctr/config.toml on Linux):

merge_method = "squash"                # "squash" (default), "merge", or "rebase"
labels = []                            # default PR label(s) to filter on; all must match
branch_prefixes = ["renovate/", "dependabot/"]  # default branch-name prefix(es) to filter on; any one matches
match_mode = "and"                     # "and" (default) or "or" - how labels + branch_prefixes combine
sort_by = "repo"                       # "repo" (default), "age", or "title"
myprojects_path = "~/path/to/myprojects.yaml"  # defaults to a file next to this config

[github]
token = "ghp_..."                      # optional; env var GITHUB_TOKEN takes precedence
# token_command = ["pass", "github"]   # optional; takes precedence over token
# labels = ["Renovate"]                # optional; overrides the global `labels` for GitHub only
# branch_prefixes = ["renovate/"]      # optional; overrides the global `branch_prefixes` for GitHub only
# match_mode = "or"                    # optional; overrides the global `match_mode` for GitHub only

# One [gitlab."<host>"] table per self-hosted GitLab instance you use.
# <host> must match the hostname in the repo's url in myprojects.yaml.
[gitlab."gitlab.example.com"]
token = "glpat-..."                    # optional; or use token_command like above
# token_command = ["pass", "gitlab"]   # optional; takes precedence over token
# api_host = "ssh.gitlab.example.com"  # optional; only needed if `glab auth status`
                                       # shows your token stored under a different
                                       # hostname than the one in your repo URLs
                                       # (e.g. glab auth login ran against an SSH host)
# labels = ["dependencies"]            # optional; overrides the global `labels` for this instance only
# branch_prefixes = ["renovate/"]      # optional; overrides the global `branch_prefixes` for this instance only

# One [gitea."<host>"] table per Gitea instance you use. proctr never
# handles Gitea tokens itself — see the note below.
[gitea."gitea.example.com"]
login = "gitea.example.com"            # optional; defaults to the host itself
# labels = ["dependencies"]            # optional; overrides the global `labels` for this instance only
# branch_prefixes = ["renovate/"]      # optional; overrides the global `branch_prefixes` for this instance only

token_command (under [github] or any [gitlab."<host>"] table) is run directly via subprocess (no shell involved, so it works the same regardless of your login shell), and its stdout (trimmed) is used as the token. This avoids storing a plaintext token in the config file. If it fails, proctr falls back to the plaintext token (or, for GitHub, gh's own auth) and shows a warning on startup.

Filtering PRs: labels and branch prefixes

proctr doesn't care which bot (or human) opened a PR — it matches purely on labels and/or branch_prefixes, so it works equally well for Renovate, Dependabot, another bot, or a hand-maintained convention, as long as it's consistent.

By default, proctr matches PRs by branch prefix renovate/ or dependabot/ (Renovate's and Dependabot's own default branch-naming conventions), not by label — this works out of the box without any config for the most common case, and covers both bots for free since branch-prefix matching is always done client-side (checking one extra prefix costs nothing extra). Add further prefixes (e.g. for another bot or your own convention) the same way.

Bots don't always use the same label across every forge — for example, GitHub/GitLab repos might use Renovate while Gitea repos use dependencies. Set labels at the top level for the default used everywhere, and override it per forge ([github]) or per instance ([gitlab."<host>"], [gitea."<host>"]) wherever it differs. Multiple labels are always matched with AND semantics — a PR must carry every configured label, not just one.

You can additionally (or instead) filter by branch name prefix via branch_prefixes, e.g. ["renovate/"] or ["dependabot/"]. Multiple prefixes are matched with OR semantics — a PR matches if its branch starts with any one of them. branch_prefixes follows the same global/per-forge/per-instance override hierarchy as labels.

labels may be set to [] to disable label filtering entirely at a given level (e.g. labels = [] with branch_prefixes = ["renovate/"] set at the same level matches by branch prefix alone). As a convenience, setting branch_prefixes at a level without also setting labels there implies labels = [] at that level — you don't need to explicitly disable labels when you only care about the branch prefix. At least one of labels or branch_prefixes must be non-empty (after overrides are resolved) for each forge/instance actually in use, or proctr raises a configuration error at startup.

When both labels and branch_prefixes are configured (and non-empty) for the same forge/instance, match_mode decides how they combine:

• "and" (default): a PR must satisfy both filters.
• "or": a PR is included if it satisfies either filter.

match_mode = "or" has an extra cost on GitHub and GitLab: gh/glab can only pre-filter PRs by label server-side (not by branch prefix), so satisfying OR semantics correctly requires one additional, unfiltered list call per repo (to also catch PRs that match the branch prefix but not the label), whose results are merged with the label-filtered query. This only happens when match_mode = "or" and both filters are non-empty; the common cases (AND mode, or only one filter configured) stay a single call. Gitea has no server-side label filter at all, so it always does one call and matches everything client-side regardless of match_mode.

Large repos: prefer filtering by label

gh pr list, glab mr list, and tea pulls list each default to fetching only the first 30 open PRs/MRs per repo, and proctr doesn't override this. Branch-prefix matching is always applied client-side to whatever page that call returns — it can't ask the forge to filter by branch prefix server-side. So if labels is empty for a forge/instance (e.g. you rely on the default branch_prefixes = ["renovate/", "dependabot/"] alone) and a repo has more than 30 open PRs of any kind, PRs beyond the first page are silently not considered, even if their branch matches.

Configuring labels lets gh/glab pre-filter server-side instead of paging through everything, so this only matters for repos that both have >30 open PRs and rely on branch-prefix-only matching. If that applies to you, set a labels filter (in addition to, or instead of, branch_prefixes) to get complete, accurate results. Raising the page size isn't a good workaround: it just fetches more unfiltered data per call and increases the risk of API timeouts on large repos.

Gitea limitation: no token management

The tea CLI has no way to pass a token or host per invocation — it only works against named logins that are registered ahead of time. proctr does not manage Gitea credentials at all: before using a Gitea instance, register it yourself with:

tea login add --name gitea.example.com --url https://gitea.example.com --token <your-token>

The login field in [gitea."<host>"] just tells proctr which registered login name to pass to tea --login; it defaults to the host itself, which matches the convention of naming logins after their host.

Gitea's own mergeable field is documented as sometimes wrong upstream — it can report false for a PR that's actually mergeable. proctr still color-codes it, though: attempting to merge a PR that turns out to have a real conflict fails cleanly with an error rather than silently doing anything harmful, so a wrong "mergeable" signal only costs you one failed merge attempt, not a bad merge. Pipeline/CI status is fetched separately via the Gitea API's combined commit status endpoint (one follow-up call per PR) and factors into the same color, alongside mergeable.

Keybindings

Key	Action
space	Toggle selection of the row under the cursor
m	Merge selected PRs (or the focused one if none selected)
a	Approve selected PRs (or the focused one if none selected)
o	Open selected PRs (or the focused one) in the browser
s	Check out the focused PR's branch (force-resetting any stale branch) and open a shell there
t	Cycle sort order (repo → age → title)
r	Refresh the PR list
q	Quit

Copyright and Licensing

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0, copyrighted by Max Mehl. As the project follows the REUSE best practices, you can find licensing information for each individual file in the LICENSES directory or corresponding file headers.

Note: In its earliest days, this project went under the name lsrenovate. It became proctr when it was generalized to work with any PR/MR, not just Renovate ones. The old name still appears in older changelog entries.