February 2, 2026
Repo drama: doors slammed shut!
GitHub discusses giving maintainers control to disable PRs
GitHub flirts with a 'no strangers' switch as devs cheer and fret
TLDR: GitHub may let project owners disable pull requests and add stricter filters to cut AI‑spam and low‑effort contributions. Commenters are torn: some celebrate a long‑overdue sanity switch, others want the review system reinvented with smarter, semantic tools—because locks alone won’t fix open source’s growing noise problem.
GitHub is flirting with a big red switch: letting project owners turn off pull requests—those “knock on the door with code” moments—to fight a flood of low-quality, often AI-made changes. The crowd reaction? Explosive. tlhunter slammed the button with “About time,” calling it wild this didn’t exist for years.
Others want the whole review process rebuilt. zekenie insists “The text diff is not the right thing to center,” pushing for AI to break changes into smaller, semantic chunks. Meanwhile, maintainers like aaronbrethorst admit they’re “aggressively blocking” anything with that AI-generated je ne sais quoi. jscyc points to real-life proof that some teams already lock things down, citing Express. csmantle says calm down: GitHub can be a simple code host, and read‑only repos make sense.
Drama hit peak meme: commenters joked about “No Soliciting” signs on repos, “kitchen closed” hours for drive‑by PRs, and bots barging in like party crashers. GitHub’s short‑term plan includes disabling PRs, restricting to collaborators, and a delete PR button; long‑term dreams tease finer permissions, AI triage, and labels when AI helped. The showdown is clear: open doors vs. peace and quiet. And everyone agrees on one thing—maintainers need help, fast.
Key Points
- •GitHub is addressing an increase in low-quality and AI-generated pull requests burdening open source maintainers.
- •Short-term options under evaluation include disabling PRs, restricting PRs to collaborators, and enabling PR deletion via the UI.
- •Disabling PRs has been a requested feature since 2016 and would support use cases like mirror repositories.
- •Long-term directions include enhanced permission models with granular controls and criteria for opening PRs.
- •GitHub may use AI for improved triage and plans to increase transparency around AI-assisted contributions, while seeking community feedback.