Add github-event-poller skill

[tofarr]

Summary

Adds a new keyword-triggered skill, github-event-poller, that streamlines creating an OpenHands automation which polls a GitHub repository on a cron schedule for new events (issues, PRs, releases, comments, push, etc.) and runs user-defined handler instructions against each event.

This complements (does not replace) the existing webhook-based source: github event trigger in openhands-automation. Polling fills the gap for repos where the user doesn't own webhook config — e.g. monitoring a third-party public repo.

Capability	Webhook trigger (source: github)	This skill (cron + REST polling)
Needs webhook access	Yes (must own the repo / org or App install)	No — any repo readable by your token
Latency	Real-time	As frequent as your cron (e.g. every 15 min)
Public-repo monitoring	Hard (you don't own webhook config)	Easy — just read public events
State / deduplication	Handled by webhook delivery	Lookback window (managed by this skill)

Design

• Uses the prompt-preset endpoint only. No custom SDK / tarball code — follows the openhands-automation rule.
• Auth strategy is decided at runtime in the sandbox: prefer any mcp__github* tools if a GitHub MCP server is configured for the user's account, else fall back to $GITHUB_TOKEN via curl. If neither is available the run fails fast with a clear error. This keeps the skill itself lightweight and lets users wire up either path later without rebuilding the automation.
• Deduplication via a lookback window (defaults to 2 × cron interval) plus a soft handler-level dedup hint for write actions ("don't post a comment if one from the same actor already exists").
• Activation via keyword triggers (poll github, watch github repo, monitor github repo, github polling, cron github, …) plus a commands/github-poller:create.md slash entry. No deprecated slash trigger in frontmatter.

Layout

skills/github-event-poller/
├── SKILL.md                                 decision flow + API recipe
├── commands/github-poller:create.md         slash-command entry point
├── references/runtime-prompt-template.md    per-tick prompt with MCP/token logic
└── scripts/create_poller.sh                 one-shot wrapper that POSTs /preset/prompt

Validation

End-to-end validated against OpenHands/OpenHands on a local automation stack:

• POST /api/automation/v1/preset/prompt → 201 Created
• Manual dispatch → run transitioned PENDING → RUNNING within ~10s.

Catalog regen: python scripts/sync_extensions.py --check → All extensions in sync. ✓

Known limitation

The auto-generated README catalog does not list the slash command for this skill, because the catalog generator (_get_slash_commands in scripts/sync_extensions.py) only reads slash entries from SKILL.md triggers: frontmatter — which AGENTS.md says is deprecated. Skills that still surface slash commands in the catalog (iterate, github-pr-review) do so via the legacy mechanism. Happy to add a fallback to the catalog generator (scan commands/*.md) in a follow-up PR if that's desirable.

Marked as draft

Posting as a draft for review — feedback welcome on naming, keyword list breadth, and whether the commands/-only convention should also light up the catalog row.

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This pull request was prepared by an AI agent (OpenHands) on behalf of @tofarr.