Duplicate Code: Marker-based close-older search/filter logic duplicated across issue and discussion handlers

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Overview

The close_older_issues and close_older_discussions handlers implement near-identical marker-based query construction and exact-marker filtering logic, with only API transport differences (REST vs GraphQL) and entity-specific fields.

This creates a high-maintenance duplication hotspot: behavior changes to close-older matching now require parallel edits in two large files.

Critical Information

• Severity: High
• Duplication type: Structural duplication
• Occurrences: 2 primary implementations
• Estimated duplicated logic: >80 lines of equivalent control flow and filtering
• Commit analyzed: d1c210e8581deb8ab71d26a678876a3e45065465

Duplication Details

Pattern

Marker-based close-older search and exact body-marker filtering are repeated with similar branching and logging:

• Build searchQuery + exactMarker based on closeOlderKey vs workflow-id marker
• Execute search call
• Apply exclusion filters (excludeNumber, marker exact-match, additional entity-specific checks)
• Emit similar filtering counters and logs

Locations

• actions/setup/js/close_older_issues.cjs:34
• actions/setup/js/close_older_issues.cjs:47
• actions/setup/js/close_older_issues.cjs:78
• actions/setup/js/close_older_discussions.cjs:37
• actions/setup/js/close_older_discussions.cjs:50
• actions/setup/js/close_older_discussions.cjs:99

Representative duplicated structure

• Build query and marker:
  • if (closeOlderKey) { ... } else { ... }
• Search execution:
  • REST (issuesAndPullRequests) vs GraphQL (search(type: DISCUSSION))
• Filtering:
  • Exclude current/new entity
  • Exact body.includes(exactMarker) match
  • Counter instrumentation and summary logs

Impact Analysis

• Maintainability: High friction; feature/security fixes to marker matching require duplicate implementation updates.
• Bug risk: Divergence risk between issue and discussion behavior over time.
• Code bloat: Large duplicated search/filter blocks obscure entity-specific differences.

Refactoring Recommendations

1. Extract shared marker-query and exact-marker filtering policy

• Suggested utility: actions/setup/js/close_older_search_helpers.cjs
• Estimated effort: Medium (3-5 hours)
• Benefits: Single source of truth for marker semantics and logging structure

2. Keep transport adapters thin

• Provide small adapters for REST/GraphQL result normalization to a shared intermediate format
• Benefits: Reduces duplicated control flow while preserving API-specific code paths

Implementation Checklist

• Introduce shared close-older marker/query helper(s)
• Normalize issue/discussion search results into a common shape
• Rewire both handlers to use shared filter pipeline
• Add parity tests to ensure behavior remains equivalent
• Validate no regressions in close-older matching

Analysis Metadata

• Analyzed files: 939 changed non-test .go/.cjs files in latest commit scope
• Detection method: Serena semantic analysis + targeted structural comparison
• Analysis date: 2026-04-13

References:

• §24342247503

Warning

⚠️ Firewall blocked 4 domains

The following domains were blocked by the firewall during workflow execution:

• ab.chatgpt.com
• api.github.com
• chatgpt.com
• github.com

To allow these domains, add them to the network.allowed list in your workflow frontmatter:

network:
  allowed:
    - defaults
    - "ab.chatgpt.com"
    - "api.github.com"
    - "chatgpt.com"
    - "github.com"

See Network Configuration for more information.

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