Staling GitHub issues is a controversial topic, and we did not take lightly the implications of the choice. We did ultimately decide to introduce staling a year ago, and we would like to take the opportunity to explain why.
GitHub issues are an invaluable source of feedback on our work. We can learn about what is and isn't working for our users, surface bugs we didn't manage to catch, and get ideas for new features and useful configurations. For this reason, we have a rotating assignee who reads every single issue that comes in, and ensures it is handled by the right party.
Realistically, though, some types of issues are likely to lose momentum, especially feature requests that aren't going to be prioritized immediately. Additionally, issues might get lost when the maintainers need feedback or more information from the issue author in order to understand the feedback. In these cases, it's important that these issues get auto-closed so as not to distract from the very valuable feedback offered by issue authors who are engaged and willing to partner with the maintainers to ensure their concerns are addressed.
This is especially critical as some feature requests can become irrelevant, either because they were already implemented, or because the project has changed in a way that makes the feature request unnecessary (or just in a different direction than the project has taken).
To prompt periodic reevaluation of open issues, we automatically close issues that don't receive any engagement after an extended period of time. If your issue has been staled, we simply request that you review your issue, ensure the details are still accurate and relevant, and leave a comment indicating that you still care to see this issue resolved.
For context, we also stale our own internal backlog, with the same goal of ensuring the issues there are clear and accurate, and are backed by engaged stakeholders.
We believe this process helps us keep strong momentum around CLI improvements, and keeps us laser-focused on the current needs of our complete user base.
Thanks for your contributions to the upkeep and improvement of the Shopify CLI!