---
title: Tell Me When It Closes
teaser: Introducing our new service - get notified when something closes on GitHub
  without getting lost in noisy discussions.
tags: news,git
author: Chris Toomey
published_on: 2017-03-28
---

We're thrilled to announce our newest service: [Tell Me When it Closes][], a
simple, straightforward application that helps you keep up with GitHub
discussions without getting lost in the noise. Instead of getting an email for
every comment on an issue or PR, get just _one_ email when the discussion
closes.

<a href="https://tellmewhenitcloses.com">
  <img
    src="https://images.thoughtbot.com/blog-vellum-image-uploads/DEEiLWHwRP64JLOoGBVw_tmwic-screenshot.png"
    alt="Tell Me When It Closes"
    class="screenshot"
    style="width: 70%;"
  />
</a>

## The Problem

GitHub provides extremely detailed notifications for issues and pull requests.
While this detail can be useful for projects you're working on, it can be a bit
noisy for projects you're less involved in. This is especially pronounced when
you're interested in a discussion around a bug or feature in a large open-source
project.

Often we just want to know when an issue or pull request closes, but GitHub's
notifications are essentially all or nothing. [Some issues][] can gather _a lot_
of feedback. We wanted a middle option, so we built one.

## The Solution!

To solve this, we've built [Tell Me When It Closes][]. You sign in via GitHub
and tell it the issues or PRs you want to follow by providing the URL. The app
watches the issue on your behalf and will email you when it closes. That's it!

## Origins

Every year we take a little time around the holidays to work on small projects.
We've affectionately dubbed this time "Ralphapalooza", and the goal is to ship
something over roughly two days of work.

This year, fellow thoughtbotters [Matt Sumner][], [Paul Smith][], and I embarked
on this quest to provide a more convenient way to watch issues and pull requests
in large projects on GitHub. Tell Me When It Closes was our answer. We've spent
a few Fridays polishing it beyond that initial prototype, and now we want to
share it with the world.

<div style="display: flex; justify-content: center;">
  <a href="https://tellmewhenitcloses.com" style="color: white;"
    class="button">Check It Out</a>
</div>

## Sidenote - GraphQL

Initially we had planned to use the notifications API from GitHub, but we
learned that it is not possible (currently) to subscribe to an issue directly
via the API. Instead, we ended up using [GitHub's new GraphQL API][], and it
turned out to be perfect for this project.

We were able to request the exact data we needed, combine requests to minimize
round trips, and dictate the shape of the data returned, making the API
interactions very straightforward. We've yet to do much in terms of providing a
GraphQL API, but as consumers, we give it two thumbs way up!

[Tell Me When It Closes]: https://tellmewhenitcloses.com/
[GitHub's new GraphQL API]: https://developer.github.com/early-access/graphql/
[Matt Sumner]: https://twitter.com/MatthewMSumner
[Paul Smith]: https://twitter.com/paulcsmith
[Some issues]: https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/505