📝 PR Summarizer for Async Teams

The problem

Engineers hate writing PR descriptions. Managers need them for reviews, standups, and retros. The result is empty 'wip' descriptions, slow reviews, and missing context in decision-making. It's a coordination tax nobody wants to pay.

The outcome

Every PR gets an auto-generated description: what changed, why (pulled from linked issues), risk level, files touched. Slack gets a daily digest of merged work. Friday gets a 'this week we shipped' summary for leadership. Engineers keep writing 'wip'.

Why OpenClaw

OpenClaw's cron automations handle the scheduling (daily digest, weekly summary), and a skill that wraps GitHub's gh CLI keeps the access simple to audit. Self-hosted, so you pay for model usage rather than per PR. Read any community skill before you install it.

Alternatives worth considering

• Hermes — Better if you want continuous summaries (updates on every significant commit, not just merges)
• Claude Cowork — For solo devs or small teams — just paste diffs into a Project and ask

Setup steps

1. Step 1: Give the agent narrow GitHub access

   Read access to repos and write access to PR descriptions only (not code, not branches), through the gh CLI or a skill you wrote or read. Use a dedicated service account so the audit trail shows bot activity clearly.

2. Step 2: Write the 'PR description' prompt

   Input: diff + linked issue. Output: 4-section description (Summary, Why, Risk, Testing). Length capped at 300 words. Dev reviews and edits before merging.

3. Step 3: Schedule the daily Slack digest

   A cron automation every weekday at 9am posts a summary of PRs merged yesterday to #engineering, grouped by project, one link per PR, short enough to be a single message.

4. Step 4: Add the Friday leadership summary

   Higher altitude. Not individual PRs — themes (we shipped 3 user-facing features, 12 bug fixes, started migration to X). Written for a non-engineer audience.

Example prompt

Given this PR diff and linked issue, write a PR description with 4 sections: Summary (1 paragraph), Why (link to issue goal), Risk (touched areas, rollback plan), Testing (how to verify). Under 300 words.

Pitfalls to avoid

• Letting the bot auto-merge. Description generation yes. Merging no. Keep humans in the approval loop.
• Summarizing every commit. Merged PRs yes, individual commits no. Signal-to-noise matters in Slack.
• Sending leadership summaries that are just PR lists. Leadership wants themes, not ledgers. Spend prompt engineering effort here — it's the highest-visibility output.

Cost breakdown (monthly)

Cost: Model usage only. Model rates change often; check the model pricing table or the cost calculator for current figures.

Related guides

• Skills guide
• Cost optimization
• Model API pricing