Maintained Open Source
activity-log
activity-log is a GitHub Action that turns recent account activity into a maintained section of a profile or repository README. Repository owners control which events appear, how they are formatted, and whether a run should write a commit at all.
Status
maintained
Period
2024—Now
Context
Public open-source tool
The challenge
GitHub exposes many event types with different payloads, visibility rules, and useful destinations. The action has to normalize those events into readable entries, update only its owned README section, and behave responsibly when API limits or private-repository details make the data incomplete.
Operating constraints
- The action must fit into an ordinary repository workflow without a separate service or account.
- Generated content must stay inside explicit README markers and preserve everything around them.
- GitHub API rate limiting and throttling must be handled without producing a misleading partial update.
- Private-repository activity requires a deliberate choice about how much detail is shown.
The approach
The action maps supported GitHub events into a normalized rendering model, applies user configuration, and writes Markdown or HTML between stable section markers. Configuration remains workflow-native, so behavior is reviewable beside the repository code and can be tested with a dry run before a commit is created.
System outline
01
Workflow inputs define the account, output style, template, commit behavior, and privacy choices.
02
Event-specific normalization produces consistent placeholders for one shared rendering template.
03
Rate-limit responses trigger waiting and backoff rather than immediate repeated requests.
04
Marker-scoped output keeps the rest of the target README under the repository owner’s control.
Selected decisions
01
Make event limits and exclusions explicitly configurable
EVENT_LIMIT controls the maximum output size, while IGNORE_EVENTS removes event families that are irrelevant to a particular profile.
02
Support a global event template
A documented placeholder set lets maintainers change wording and links without forking event-processing logic.
03
Provide a dry-run path
Maintainers can inspect generated output without changing the README or creating a commit.
04
Back off when GitHub throttles
The action respects retry guidance and waits instead of turning temporary API pressure into a noisy failure loop.
The result
The result is a published and actively maintained Marketplace action that can be added with one workflow file, while still exposing meaningful control over event volume, filtering, formatting, privacy, and commit behavior.