If you’ve ever maintained an open source repo, you’ve seen this classic horror story:
- Someone opens an issue in a language you don’t speak
- The thread grows into a 47-comment monster
- Someone asks “any updates?” every 3 days
- You finally reply… 2 weeks later… with “sorry, busy”
- Everyone feels bad
- Nobody ships anything
So I built Yaplate — a GitHub App bot that helps maintainers and contributors communicate better across languages, inside GitHub, without chaos and clutter.
Think of it as:
Translate + Thread TL;DR + AI Reply Helper + A friendly project manager
but in your GitHub issues and PRs.
What Even Is Yaplate?
Yaplate is a GitHub App that works directly in:
- Issues
- Pull requests
- Comments
- Review comments
It helps you:
- Translate comments
- Summarize long threads
- Generate reply drafts
- Follow up with people automatically
- Gently mark dead threads as stale (optional)
- Auto-delete its own comments (so it doesn’t become that bot)
Want to see it live? Try it in the test repo → Yaplate Test
For full demo, please visit Yaplate website
How You Use It (Super Simple)
- You don’t open dashboards.
- You don’t leave GitHub.
- You just mention the bot like a summoning ritual.
(Tip: quote the comment you want to translate or reply to.)
Summarize a Thread
@yaplate summarize
Want the summary in another language?
@yaplate summarize in <language_code>
Translate a Comment
Quote the comment you want translated and run:
@yaplate translate this to <language_code>
Generate a Reply Draft
This is the maintainer lifesaver.
Quote the comment and ask:
@yaplate reply in <language_code>
Boom: a reply draft in the requested language.
Example:
A contributor writes a bug report in Japanese.
You run@yaplate translate in enand@yaplate reply in ja.
You respond politely in 20 seconds without leaving GitHub.
Yaplate Is Clean (It Deletes Its Own Comments)
Bots have a reputation for turning issue threads into… well… bot threads.
So Yaplate includes this nice little feature:
Auto-delete bot comments
If you delete the comment that triggered Yaplate, it deletes its own response too.
It’s like:
“No worries, I’ll see myself out.”
Follow-Up Reminders (Optional, But Glorious)
Let’s talk about the real villain of open source:
The “I’ll update soon” ghosting phenomenon
Yaplate can automatically follow up when:
- An issue is assigned to someone
- A PR is opened (optional)
It starts a timer, then posts a reminder if nothing changes.
And here’s the best part:
Follow-ups are posted in the author’s language
Yaplate detects the language of the thread and replies in that language when possible.
The “I’m Blocked” Safety Valve
Yaplate is not a nagging machine.
If someone says:
- “I’m blocked”
- “Waiting for maintainer approval”
- “Need review before proceeding”
Yaplate will:
- stop escalation
- request maintainer attention
- avoid stale marking
- avoid further reminders
Because nobody wants a bot telling a contributor to “update soon” while they’re waiting on you.
First-Time Contributor Greetings
Yaplate will greet contributors when they open their first issue or PR in your repo.
Because small things like this matter.
Open source doesn’t have to feel cold.
Yaplate has manners
- Bots are loud. Yaplate has manners.
- It helps you ship, not babysit threads.
- Less guilt. More merges.
Language Codes
Yaplate uses standard ISO 639-1 codes, like:
| Code | Language |
|---|---|
en | English |
hi | Hindi |
fr | French |
ja | Japanese |
zh | Chinese |
What It’s Built With
Under the hood, Yaplate is powered by:
FastAPI (webhook server)
Redis (state + scheduling)
Lingo.dev API (translation)
Gemini API (summaries, reply drafts, semantic checks)
GitHub App API (issue/PR integration)
Special note: Yaplate is powered by Lingo.dev, an AI-powered localization engine that helps you localize your projects and workflows.
It’s lightweight, fast, and designed to be self-hosted.
What’s Coming Next
Yaplate’s roadmap includes:
- Better handling of language drift in long threads
- Per-repo and per-org configuration
- Disable bot for selected issues/PRs
- Cached responses when APIs are down
- Better permission minimization
Why Yaplate Exists
Open source is amazing.
But sometimes it feels like:
- Maintainers are overwhelmed
- Contributors are confused
- Language becomes an accidental gatekeeper
- Issues go stale for the wrong reasons
Yaplate is my attempt to fix that.
Not by replacing humans, but by making human collaboration easier.
If you maintain a repo with global contributors, Yaplate might genuinely save you time — and make your community feel more welcoming.
And honestly?
That’s a win worth automating.