[Intermediate]: Reduce spam in .github/workflows/bot-office-hours.yml for maintainers/committers

[exploreriii]

🧩 Intermediate Contributors

This issue is intended for contributors who already have some familiarity with the
Hiero Python SDK codebase and contribution workflow.

You should feel comfortable:

• navigating existing source code and examples
• understanding SDK concepts without step-by-step guidance
• following the standard PR workflow without additional onboarding

If this is your very first contribution to the project, we recommend starting with a few
Good First Issues before working on this one.

🐞 Problem Description

We have a .github/workflows/bot-office-hours.yml which notifies users of an upcoming office hour on any pull request

Maintainers and committers already know of these office hours, because they run it, so do not need to be notified again

💡 Expected Solution

Edit
.github/workflows/bot-office-hours.yml
to selectively filter out posting to issues created by @hiero-ledger/hiero-sdk-python-maintainers or @hiero-ledger/hiero-sdk-python-committers

🧠 Implementation Notes

• pull data from the maintainers and committers
• create a list of joint excluded users
• update workflow so even if they have open pull requests, it skips posting to them
• add permissions: member read

✅ Acceptance Criteria

To merge this issue, the pull request must:

• Fully address the problem described above
• Follow existing project conventions and patterns
• Include tests or example updates where appropriate
• Pass all CI checks
• Include a valid changelog entry
• Use DCO and GPG-signed commits

📚 Additional Context or Resources

Optional.

[coderabbitai]

📝 CodeRabbit Plan Mode

Generate an implementation plan and prompts that you can use with your favorite coding agent.

✅ Successfully generated implementation plan.

💡 Use @coderabbitai <feedback> to replan

Examples

• Example 1
• Example 2

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🔗 Similar Issues

Related Issues

• Edit office hour bot to post once per user #1121
• Create Office Hour Bot #902
• feat: Max 2 WorkflowBot posts #840
• [Good First Issue]: Rename .github/workflows/ bots to be consistent #1042
• Max post limit verification bot #892
• [Intermediate]: Create workflow that sends a reminder to link an isssue to a PR #1144
• [Good First Issue]: Create docs/maintainers/team.md #1064
• Create Community Call bot at .github/workflows/bot-community-call.yml #1056

🔗 Related PRs

#1123 - feat: Add workflow to notify team about Good first issues [merged]
#1150 - ci: reduce office-hours reminder spam by posting only on most recent PR per user [closed]

👤 Suggested Assignees

• exploreriii
• kplnosmn94-droid
• TianyangRen

---

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Coding Plan

Approach

Ticket Summary

The bot-office-hours.yml workflow currently posts office hours notifications to all open PRs. Since maintainers and committers run these office hours, they don't need notifications. This ticket implements filtering to exclude PRs authored by members of the @hiero-ledger/hiero-sdk-python-maintainers and @hiero-ledger/hiero-sdk-python-committers teams from receiving notifications.

Observations

Codebase Summary

This is the Hiero SDK Python repository with comprehensive GitHub Actions automation. The bot-office-hours.yml workflow runs fortnightly on Wednesdays, checks for meeting weeks using date arithmetic, retrieves all open PRs grouped by author, and posts reminder comments to the most recent PR per author if no previous notification exists. The project follows established patterns including explicit permission declarations in workflows, delegation to external scripts for complex logic (e.g., gfi_notify_team.js, p0_issues_notify_team.js), and mandatory changelog entries for workflow changes.

Assumptions

Assumption 1: Token requirements for team membership access

Options Considered:

• Use workflow-level permissions: members: read with default GITHUB_TOKEN
• Use a Personal Access Token (PAT) stored in repository secrets with read:org scope
• Use a third-party action that requires read:org token
• Maintain a static list of usernames in a file

Chosen Option: Use a Personal Access Token (PAT) stored in repository secrets with read:org scope

Rationale: The workflow will require a Personal Access Token (PAT) with read:org scope stored in repository secrets (e.g., ORG_READ_TOKEN). This aligns with the project's existing use of secrets for authentication and allows the workflow to fetch team membership data via GitHub CLI (gh api), which is already used throughout the workflow. This approach extends the existing bash/Python inline script pattern without introducing external dependencies or requiring manual maintenance of user lists.

Assumption 2: Handling team membership API responses

Options Considered:

• Filter team members list to only active human users
• Use the raw team membership list without additional filtering

Chosen Option: Use the raw team membership list without additional filtering

Rationale: The GitHub API returns current team members, and if a team member is in the team but not active, that's acceptable—they still shouldn't receive office hours notifications. This keeps the implementation simple and aligns with the ticket's intent to exclude team members regardless of their current PR activity level.

💡 User Tips

Regenerate the plan with different choices with @coderabbitai <feedback>.

Implementation Steps

Phase 1: Update Workflow Permissions and Fetch Team Members

This phase adds the ability to query GitHub organization team membership and creates a combined exclusion list of maintainer and committer usernames.

Task 1: Add Required Token and Permissions

Prepare the workflow to access organization team data.

• Update .github/workflows/bot-office-hours.yml to add a comment documenting that the workflow requires an ORG_READ_TOKEN secret with read:org scope to fetch team membership
• Note that the existing permissions: block (contents: read, pull-requests: write) does not need modification, as team membership queries will use the PAT rather than default GITHUB_TOKEN

Task 2: Fetch Maintainers Team Members

Add a new step after the fortnightly meeting check to retrieve maintainer team members.

• Insert a new step in .github/workflows/bot-office-hours.yml after the "Check if this is a meeting week" step
• Use gh api with the ORG_READ_TOKEN to call /orgs/hiero-ledger/teams/hiero-sdk-python-maintainers/members
• Parse the JSON response to extract login usernames into a simple list
• Store the list in an environment variable or file for use in subsequent steps

Task 3: Fetch Committers Team Members

Add another step to retrieve committer team members using the same pattern.

• Add a step in .github/workflows/bot-office-hours.yml immediately after the maintainers fetch step
• Use gh api with ORG_READ_TOKEN to call /orgs/hiero-ledger/teams/hiero-sdk-python-committers/members
• Parse the JSON response to extract login usernames
• Store the list alongside or combined with the maintainers list

Task 4: Create Combined Exclusion List

Merge both team member lists into a single exclusion list.

• Add a step in .github/workflows/bot-office-hours.yml that combines maintainers and committers into a deduplicated list
• Export this combined list as an environment variable (e.g., EXCLUDED_AUTHORS) that can be accessed by the PR processing logic
• Format the list for easy membership checking in bash (e.g., space-separated or line-separated)

🤖 Prompt for AI agents

Update the bot-office-hours.yml workflow to fetch team membership data and build
an exclusion list. The goal is to prepare the data needed to filter out PRs
authored by maintainers and committers.

Add a comment at the top of the workflow documenting the ORG_READ_TOKEN secret
requirement with read:org scope.

After the meeting week check step, add new steps to:
- Fetch maintainers from
/orgs/hiero-ledger/teams/hiero-sdk-python-maintainers/members using gh api with
ORG_READ_TOKEN
- Fetch committers from
/orgs/hiero-ledger/teams/hiero-sdk-python-committers/members using gh api with
ORG_READ_TOKEN
- Parse JSON responses to extract login usernames
- Combine both lists into a deduplicated EXCLUDED_AUTHORS environment variable
formatted for bash membership checking

Phase 2: Update PR Filtering Logic

This phase modifies the existing PR comment posting logic to skip PRs authored by users in the exclusion list.

Task 1: Add Author Check in PR Processing Loop

Modify the PR iteration logic to skip excluded authors.

• Update the PR processing section in .github/workflows/bot-office-hours.yml (currently around lines 62-72)
• Before checking for existing comments, add a conditional check to see if the PR author (from .user.login in the PR JSON data) is in the EXCLUDED_AUTHORS list
• If the author is in the exclusion list, skip to the next PR without posting a comment
• Maintain the existing logic for checking duplicate "Office Hour Bot" comments for non-excluded authors

Task 2: Add Logging for Excluded Authors

Include debug output to track which PRs are being skipped.

• Add echo statements in .github/workflows/bot-office-hours.yml when skipping a PR due to author exclusion
• Log the PR number and author login for transparency and debugging
• This follows the pattern of existing informational output in the workflow (e.g., "Posting comment to PR...")

🤖 Prompt for AI agents

Modify the PR processing loop in bot-office-hours.yml to skip PRs from excluded
authors. The goal is to prevent maintainers and committers from receiving office
hours notifications.

In the PR processing section, before the existing comment check:
- Extract the PR author from .user.login in the PR JSON data
- Check if the author is in the EXCLUDED_AUTHORS list
- If found, log the PR number and author, then skip to the next PR
- If not found, continue with the existing duplicate comment check and posting
logic

Phase 3: Documentation

This phase ensures the change is properly documented per project conventions.

Task 1: Update Changelog

Add an entry documenting the workflow change.

• Add a new entry in CHANGELOG.md under the "Changed" section in the format: "Changed .github/workflows/bot-office-hours.yml to filter out office hours notifications for maintainers and committers (#issue_number)"
• Follow the existing changelog patterns shown in the exploration results
• Include the issue number reference if available

Task 2: Add Workflow Configuration Documentation

Document the new secret requirement.

• Add a comment block at the top of .github/workflows/bot-office-hours.yml explaining that the workflow requires an ORG_READ_TOKEN secret configured with read:org scope
• Describe what the secret is used for (fetching team membership to exclude maintainers/committers from notifications)
• This helps future maintainers understand the workflow's dependencies

🤖 Prompt for AI agents

Document the workflow changes following project conventions. The goal is to
record the change in the changelog and explain the new secret requirement.

Add a CHANGELOG.md entry under "Changed" documenting the bot-office-hours.yml
filtering update for maintainers and committers.

Add a comment block at the top of bot-office-hours.yml explaining the
ORG_READ_TOKEN secret requirement, its read:org scope, and its purpose for
fetching team membership to exclude maintainers and committers from
notifications.

---

🚀 Next Steps

🤖 All AI agent prompts combined

Task: 1

Update the bot-office-hours.yml workflow to fetch team membership data and build
an exclusion list. The goal is to prepare the data needed to filter out PRs
authored by maintainers and committers.

Add a comment at the top of the workflow documenting the ORG_READ_TOKEN secret
requirement with read:org scope.

After the meeting week check step, add new steps to:
- Fetch maintainers from
/orgs/hiero-ledger/teams/hiero-sdk-python-maintainers/members using gh api with
ORG_READ_TOKEN
- Fetch committers from
/orgs/hiero-ledger/teams/hiero-sdk-python-committers/members using gh api with
ORG_READ_TOKEN
- Parse JSON responses to extract login usernames
- Combine both lists into a deduplicated EXCLUDED_AUTHORS environment variable
formatted for bash membership checking
===============================================================================

Task: 2

Modify the PR processing loop in bot-office-hours.yml to skip PRs from excluded
authors. The goal is to prevent maintainers and committers from receiving office
hours notifications.

In the PR processing section, before the existing comment check:
- Extract the PR author from .user.login in the PR JSON data
- Check if the author is in the EXCLUDED_AUTHORS list
- If found, log the PR number and author, then skip to the next PR
- If not found, continue with the existing duplicate comment check and posting
logic
===============================================================================

Task: 3

Document the workflow changes following project conventions. The goal is to
record the change in the changelog and explain the new secret requirement.

Add a CHANGELOG.md entry under "Changed" documenting the bot-office-hours.yml
filtering update for maintainers and committers.

Add a comment block at the top of bot-office-hours.yml explaining the
ORG_READ_TOKEN secret requirement, its read:org scope, and its purpose for
fetching team membership to exclude maintainers and committers from
notifications.

💡 Iterate on the plan with: @coderabbitai <feedback>

Example Feedback
- @coderabbitai You can skip phase 3. Add a simple unit test case for phase 2.
- @coderabbitai For assumption 1 go ahead with option 3 and replan.

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