Managing Applications
When a contributor wants to work on one of your issues, they apply right from Grainlify — here's where you review that and decide who gets the work.
Where to look
Open Maintainers → Issues. You'll see every issue across your connected projects in one list, with search and filters for status (open/closed), whether it has applicants, whether it's already assigned, and how long it's been sitting without activity.
Click into any issue to see two tabs:
- Applications — everyone who's applied, with their message.
- Discussions — the full comment thread on the issue, in case there's other back-and-forth worth reading.
Reviewing an applicant
Each application shows the contributor's profile, when they applied, and their message about how they'd approach the issue. From here you can:
- Assign — makes them the official assignee on GitHub and lets them know they've got it.
- Reject — lets them know you're passing this time, so they can move on to something else. This doesn't remove their original application from the thread, it just adds your response.
If you already assigned someone and need to free the issue back up, use Unassign — this removes them as assignee and reopens the issue to new applications.
These are one-at-a-time decisions — there's no bulk-assign or bulk-reject, so review each application on its own.
Posting an announcement
You can also post a message directly to an issue from Grainlify — handy for things like clarifying scope or letting several applicants know the issue's been claimed, without leaving the dashboard.
A tip on picking a contributor
Every applicant's message links back to their profile, which shows their contribution history and rank — a quick way to gauge experience before deciding who to assign.
Once you've assigned someone, their pull request shows up in Reviewing Pull Requests as soon as they open it — that's the next place to check in on progress.