Night's Watch

Autonomous overnight GitHub maintenance agent powered by Claude. Finds TODOs, outdated dependencies, failing CI, and open issues — fixes them while you sleep, then sends a morning summary.

How it works

Night's Watch runs inside GitHub Actions on a schedule. It uses two Claude agents — an implementer and a reviewer — with GitHub Issues as the work queue and labels as the state machine.

scan (hourly)
  → finds TODOs, outdated deps, failing CI, open issues
  → creates GitHub Issues labeled nightswatch:queued

implementer (triggered by label)
  → reads issue, creates branch nightswatch/issue-<N>
  → writes fix, runs tests
  → opens PR labeled nightswatch:reviewing
  → if stuck → labels nightswatch:blocked, pings you

reviewer (triggered by PR)
  → reads diff + original issue
  → approves or requests changes
  → after max cycles without resolution → escalates to blocked

on approval:
  auto_merge     → merges the PR automatically
  request_review → pings you, leaves PR open for final sign-off

report (7am daily)
  → posts a GitHub Issue with overnight summary

Setup

npx @mostlyhuman/nightswatch@latest init

This creates .github/workflows/nightswatch.yml in your repo. Then:

1. Add ANTHROPIC_API_KEY as a GitHub Actions secret
2. Optionally add .nightswatch.yml to customize behavior
3. Commit and push

Configuration

Create .nightswatch.yml in your repo root:

max_issues_per_run: 3       # cap issues created per scan (default: 5)

scanners:
  todos: true               # find TODO/FIXME comments
  dependencies: true        # find outdated npm packages
  ci: true                  # find failing GitHub Actions workflows
  issues: true              # pick up open GitHub issues

agents:
  implementer_model: claude-opus-4-6
  reviewer_model: claude-opus-4-6
  max_review_cycles: 3      # escalate to blocked after N cycles

on_approval: auto_merge     # auto_merge | request_review
# Per-scanner override:
# on_approval:
#   todos: auto_merge
#   issues: request_review

notify: "@your-github-username"   # who to ping on blockers

report:
  create_issue: true        # post morning summary as a GitHub Issue

Labels

Night's Watch creates these labels automatically on first run:

| Label | Meaning | |---|---| | nightswatch:queued | Issue is queued for implementation | | nightswatch:implementing | Agent is actively working | | nightswatch:reviewing | PR is open, reviewer running | | nightswatch:changes-requested | Reviewer left comments, reimplementing | | nightswatch:approved | Reviewer approved | | nightswatch:blocked | Human intervention needed |

Requirements

• GitHub Actions enabled
• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY secret set in your repo
• Node.js 20+

License

MIT