Random Contributor

Random Contributor Skill

Purpose

• Select a uniformly random contributor from a public GitHub repository. Useful for sampling, shoutouts, delegation, or fair assignment among contributors.

What it does

• Uses GitHub REST API (public endpoints) to list contributors for a repo (handles pagination).
• Falls back to scraping the repository's contributors page if API rate limits or CORS prevent API use.
• Returns contributor info: login, name (if available), avatar URL, profile URL, contributions count.

When to use

• Pick a random maintainer or contributor for tasks like "who should review" or "who to credit".
• Should be used only on public repositories.

Prerequisites

• curl and jq for Bash examples, or Node.js 18+ for JS examples.
• Optional GitHub token (GH_TOKEN) increases rate limits; skill works without it for small repos.

Examples --------

Bash (uses GitHub API; paginates with per_page=100):

REPO_OWNER=besoeasy
REPO_NAME=open-skills

# Fetch contributor list (public API). Uses optional GH_TOKEN env for higher rate limit.
AUTH_HEADER=""
if [ -n "${GH_TOKEN:-}" ]; then
  AUTH_HEADER="-H \"Authorization: token ${GH_TOKEN}\""
fi

# Get contributors (first page); for large repos you'd page. Here we do simple pagination loop.
contributors=()
page=1
while true; do
  out=$(eval "curl -fsS ${AUTH_HEADER} \"https://api.github.com/repos/${REPO_OWNER}/${REPO_NAME}/contributors?per_page=100&page=${page}\"")
  count=$(echo "$out" | jq 'length')
  if [ "$count" -eq 0 ]; then break; fi
  logins=$(echo "$out" | jq -r '.[].login')
  while read -r l; do contributors+=("$l"); done 1000 contributors) consider streaming or reservoir sampling instead of fetching all contributors at once.
- Respect GitHub API rate limits; provide an option to use GH_TOKEN to increase limits.
- Public repos only; do not attempt to access private repos without appropriate credentials.

See also
- skills/check-crypto-address-balance (example of API usage patterns)

## Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

- **Author:** [besoeasy](https://github.com/besoeasy)
- **Source:** [besoeasy/open-skills](https://github.com/besoeasy/open-skills)
- **License:** MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.