Footer Control

Control whether AI-generated footers are added to created and updated GitHub items (issues, pull requests, discussions, releases). Footers provide attribution and links to workflow runs, but you may want to omit them for cleaner content or when using custom branding.

Global Footer Control

Set footer: false at the safe-outputs level to hide footers for all output types:

safe-outputs:
  footer: false                      # hide footers globally
  create-issue:
    title-prefix: "[ai] "
  create-pull-request:
    title-prefix: "[ai] "

When footer: false is set, visible attribution text is omitted from item bodies but hidden XML markers remain for searchability:

• <!-- gh-aw-workflow-id: WORKFLOW_NAME --> — for search and tracking
• <!-- gh-aw-tracker-id: unique-id --> — for issue/discussion tracking

Applies to all output types: create-issue, create-pull-request, create-discussion, update-issue, update-pull-request, update-discussion, and update-release.

Searching for Workflow-Created Items

Use the gh-aw-workflow-id marker (the workflow filename without .md) to find items in GitHub search:

repo:owner/repo is:issue is:open "gh-aw-workflow-id: daily-team-status" in:body
repo:owner/repo "gh-aw-workflow-id: bot-responder" in:comments

Combine with is:open, created:>2024-01-01, or org:your-org filters. See GitHub advanced search.

Per-Handler Footer Control

Override the global setting for specific output types by setting footer at the handler level:

safe-outputs:
  footer: false                      # global default: no footers
  create-issue:
    title-prefix: "[issue] "
    # inherits footer: false
  create-pull-request:
    title-prefix: "[pr] "
    footer: true                     # override: show footer for PRs only

Individual handler settings always take precedence over the global setting.

PR Review Footer Control

For PR reviews (submit-pull-request-review), the footer field supports conditional control over when the footer is added to the review body:

safe-outputs:
  create-pull-request-review-comment:
  submit-pull-request-review:
    footer: "if-body"         # conditional footer based on review body

The footer field accepts "always" (default), "none", or "if-body" (footer only when the review has body text). Booleans are accepted: true → "always", false → "none". Use "if-body" for clean approval reviews — approvals without body text appear without a footer, while reviews with comments include it.

Backward Compatibility

The default value for footer is true. To hide footers, explicitly set footer: false.

Customizing Footer Messages

Instead of hiding footers entirely, you can customize the footer message text using the messages.footer template. This allows you to maintain attribution while using custom branding:

safe-outputs:
  messages:
    footer: ">  Powered by [{workflow_name}]({agentic_workflow_url})"
  create-issue:
    title-prefix: "[bot] "

The messages.footer template supports variables like {workflow_name}, {agentic_workflow_url}, {run_url}, {triggering_number}, {effective_tokens_suffix}, and more. {agentic_workflow_url} links directly to the agentic workflow file view for the run (equivalent to {run_url}/agentic_workflow), while {run_url} links to the plain Actions run page. {effective_tokens_suffix} is a pre-formatted, always-safe suffix (e.g. " · ● 1.2K" or "") that you can place directly before {history_link} — the same ● format the default footer uses. See Custom Messages for complete documentation on message templates and available variables.

Related Documentation

• Safe Outputs - Complete safe outputs reference
• Custom Messages - Message templates and variables
• Frontmatter - All configuration options for workflows