Pilot Automated Actions

Aviator offers automated actions you can configure to perform specific actions depending on an event or scenario. Learn how to write custom scenarios here.

Aviator offers automated actions that can be configured via the configuration file to perform specific actions depending on a particular event or scenario. You can write your own custom scenarios and corresponding actions in the configuration file.

Each Pilot workflow contains one scenario and one or more actions. Here’s an example of a simple scenario:

scenarios:
  - name: "instant merge"
    trigger:
      pull_request:
        labeled: "av-instant-merge"
    actions:
      - mergequeue:
          instant_merge: {}

In the above example, we are triggering an instant merge action based on the label av-instant-merge.

Scenarios

A scenario is a configurable, automated process that is invoked in response to a certain trigger and which in turn may run several actions. Scenarios are often phrased in English as “if this, then that.”

In the configuration file, the scenarios object has three properties

• name - a readable name that uniquely identifies a particular scenario

• trigger - represents an object and an associated event that will trigger this scenario

• actions - a list of actions that will be triggered in order when the trigger scenario condition is met.

Triggers

Each trigger is associated with a context of an object. Currently we support the following types of contexts:

pull_request

It has the following associated events:

• opened: represents when the PR is opened

trigger:
  pull_request: opened

• labeled: when a GitHub label is added to the PR

trigger:
  pull_request:
    labeled: "av-instant-merge"

You can also specify who labeled the PR or who the author is. Here a GitHub username can be provided. If you want to instead represent a team, you can use @org/team. Exactly one of github_login and github_team must be specified.

trigger:
  pull_request:
    labeled:
      label "av-instant-merge"
      labeled_by: ghusername

trigger:
  pull_request:
    labeled:
      label "av-instant-merge"
      authored_by: “@aviator-co/engineering”

• synchronize: The PR was synchronized. This means that the pull request either had new commits pushed to it, was force-pushed, or had its base branch changed.

trigger:
  pull_request: synchronize

• submitted: The PR is ready for review.. This means that it was either opened, or switched from draft to ready for review.

trigger:
  pull_request: submitted

Note that both submitted and opened events will be triggered when a PR is directly opened in review mode (as non-draft).

pull_request_review

Associated events:

• approved: The PR review provided was of approved type.

trigger:
  pull_request_review: approved

mergequeue

Associated events:

• ready: A user requested a PR to be queued. This is triggered at the same time as the pullrequest.labeled action if the PR was queued using a GitHub label.

trigger:
  mergequeue: ready

• queued: A PR was added to the queue.

  • skip_line [optional]: A PR marked to skip the line was added to the queue.

trigger:
  mergequeue: queued

To add the skip_line option:

trigger:
  mergequeue: 
    queued:
      skip_line: true

trigger:
  mergequeue: dequeued

• added_to_batch: A PR was added to batch for validation. This is applicable only for parallel mode. This will still be called even if the draft PR was skipped due to skip_draft_when_up_to_date config setting in the parallel mode.

trigger:
  mergequeue: added_to_batch

• removed_from_batch: A PR was removed from the validation batch. This is applicable only for parallel mode. This will still be called even if the draft PR was skipped due to skip_draft_when_up_to_date config setting in the parallel mode.

trigger:
  mergequeue: removed_from_batch

• top_of_queue: A new PR reached the top of the queue.

trigger:
  mergequeue: top_of_queue

• merged: A PR was merged.

trigger:
  mergequeue: merged

• blocked: A PR was blocked by Aviator.

trigger:
  mergequeue: blocked

• stuck: A PR was marked as stuck by Aviator.

trigger:
  mergequeue: stuck

• reset: The queue was reset.

trigger:
  mergequeue: reset

schedule

Used to trigger scheduled events. Please read Scheduled Events for examples.

• cron_utc - required string parameter. Accepts a unix cron format. You can use a cron visual tool like crontab.guru for building your cron string.

Actions

You can specify one or more actions to be executed based on the triggers specified in the scenarios. These actions are performed serially in the order specified and are executed in the context of the trigger. For instance, if we specify the labeled event for a pull_request in the trigger, then the associated action can be performed on the same PR that was labeled.

There are a few types of actions.

github

These include actions to add a label or add a reviewer.

• add_label - Add a GitHub label to the PR. You can directly pass it the label name.

• remove_label - Remove the provided GitHub label from the PR. If the label doesn't exist, this action will be a no-op.

• add_reviewer - Add a reviewer to the PR. You can directly pass the username or a team name (@org/team) as a parameter to this action.

actions:
  - github:
    add_label: urgent
  - github:
    remove_label: urgent
  - github:
    add_reviewer: ghusername  # or “@org/team”

mergequeue

Used to interact with Aviator’s merge queue. The queue action will enqueue the PR and instant_merge will merge the PR instantly. You can read more about instant merge behavior here.

actions:
  - mergequeue: queue
  - mergequeue:
    instant_merge: {}

There's also the ability to pause and unpause. By default, the entire repository (including all base branches) will be paused/unpaused.

actions:
  - mergequeue: pause
  - mergequeue: unpause

You can also specify a branch_pattern or a paused_message, both of these fields are optional.

actions:
  - mergequeue:
    pause:
      branch_pattern: release-*
      paused_message: "The release branch is paused while we wait on a fix."
  - mergequeue:
    unpause:
      branch_pattern: release-*

slack

Send a Slack notification to the connected Slack account. Note that this requires Slack integration to be active.

• channel: Send notification to a Slack channel.

  • text: The text to send in the notification.

  • hook_url [optional]: The webhook URL for a Slack channel. If not provided, the default channel set up with the Slack integration will be used.

• direct: Send a Slack DM to a user directly.

  • text: The text to send in the notification.

  • blocks [optional]: Customized Slack blocks to send in the notification. See Slack's block building kit.
  • github_users [optional]: The GitHub users to notify (must be the GitHub username associated with the user). If not specified, the notification will be sent to the author of the PR.

  • github_group [optional]: The GitHub group whose members will be notified.

  • labels [optional]: Labels associated with this Slack DM that users can utilize to personalize DMs. By default, all specified users (either github_users, github_group, or the author of the PR will be notified). If you want to opt-out, see Personal Integrations.

  • opt-in [optional]: If True, then the users will need to voluntarily opt-in to receive the DM.

actions:
  - slack:
      channel:
        text: “A new PR has been posted”
        hook_url: “https://hooks.slack.com/services/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx”
  - slack:
      direct:
        text: “A new PR has been posted”
        github_users:
          - login: ghusername1
          - login: ghusername2
        github_group: "eng/infrastructure"

script

If you want more custom controls over the actions, you may also choose to write a custom script using Javascript. All the other actions described above can be triggered via script as well. Here’s a quick example:

actions:
  - script:
      code: |
        console.log("hello", "world", event, event.target, event.pullRequest.number);
        aviator.github.addLabel({ label: "urgent", target: event.pullRequest.id });

The following attributes are accessible via the event variable.

• pullRequest

  • url: The URL of the pull request.

  • number: The number of the pull request. (ex. event.pullRequest.number)

  • state: The state of the pull request. If the trigger is a pull_request trigger, options are: open, closed. If the trigger is a mergequeue trigger, options are: open, queued, blocked, merged, tagged.

  • labels: Labels that are on the pull request.

  • user

    • login: The GitHub login of the user who opened the pull request.

  • skipLine (mergequeue trigger only): [boolean] Whether the pull request was queued with skip line.

  • skipLineReason (mergequeue trigger only): The skip line reason for a pull request if it was given. (ex. event.pullRequest.skipLineReason)

• repository

  • name: The name of the repository. (ex. event.repository.name)

  • full_name: The full name of the repository, including the organization name, in the format org/repo_name.