Banshee

A CLI for managing large-scale code changes across a GitHub organisation, and the lifecycle of Pull Requests created.

Why

As any company grows, you accumulate small pieces of tech debt, particularly for products that use software built by infrastructure and platform teams.

For 50 engineers, it's acceptable to ask for a 10-line change. At 500 engineers, it's a lot less reasonable.

Hopefully this CLI helps manage those code changes and the pull request lifecycle required to get them applied.

Highlighted Features

• 🤖 Github App creds for higher ratelimits and impersonal attribution.
• 🚚 Progress saving which lets you stop, start and resume migrations any time, or in the event of an error.
• 🍞 Batching so you can space out the work over multiple days/weeks.
• ✅ Assign reviewers as a default if codeowners don't get assigned, never leave a PR unreviewed again
• 📋 View a list of PRs related to the migration, in any state

Installation

Supported Architectures

• darwin-arm64 (macOS with Apple Silicon)
• darwin-amd64 (macOS with Intel)
• linux-amd64 (Linux x86_64)

Install from Release

export ARCH="darwin-arm64"  # Change to your architecture
curl -o banshee -L "https://github.com/TheJokersThief/Banshee/releases/latest/download/banshee-${ARCH}" \
  && chmod +x banshee \
  && sudo mv banshee /usr/local/bin/

Verify installation:

banshee version

Quickstart

1. Create Configuration Files

Create your global configuration (config.yaml):

github:
  use_github_app: false
  token: "gha_YOUR_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN"

defaults:
  git_email: "your-email@example.com"
  git_name: "Your Name"
  organisation: "your-org"
  code_reviewer: "team-slug"

options:
  log_level: info
  save_progress:
    enabled: true
    directory: ".banshee"

Create your migration configuration (migration.yaml):

search_query: "file:old_config.json"
organisation: "your-org"
branch_name: "chore/update-config"

actions:
  - action: replace
    description: "Update old config references"
    input:
      glob: "**/*.json"
      old: "old_config"
      new: "new_config"

pr_title: "Update config references"
pr_body_file: "pr_body.md"

2. Clone Repositories

Before running migrations, clone the target repositories:

banshee clone migration.yaml --config config.yaml

3. Run Migration

Execute the migration across all matching repositories:

banshee migrate migration.yaml --config config.yaml

4. Review and Merge

List all PRs created by the migration:

banshee list migration.yaml --config config.yaml

Automatically merge PRs that pass all branch protections:

banshee merge migration.yaml --config config.yaml

Commands

Global Flags

• -c, --config Path to global CLI config file (default: ./config.yaml)
• -h, --help Show help message

Available Commands

• version - Print banshee CLI version
• clone <path> - Clone all repositories involved in the migration
• migrate <path> - Run the migration actions across repositories
  • -j, --concurrency <n> - Number of repos to process in parallel (requires cache_repos.enabled: true)
• list <path> - List PRs associated with a migration
• merge <path> - Merge PRs that pass all branch protections

For detailed help on any command, run banshee <command> --help

Examples

Pre-cloning repos for migration

banshee clone examples/migration_config/migration.yaml \
    --config examples/global_config/config.yaml \

Running a migration

banshee migrate examples/migration_config/migration.yaml \
    --config examples/global_config/config.yaml

Listing all PRs for a migration

banshee list examples/migration_config/migration.yaml \
    --config examples/global_config/config.yaml \
    --state all \
    --format json

Merging any PRs not blocked by branch protections

This assumes that you block merge to mainline branches with branch protections like "requires a PR", "required approvers: 1", "required status checks" and that they're not handled on the honour system.

This just checks the GitHub "mergeable state" is "clean" (terms determined by GitHub)
to see if the PR can be merged.

banshee merge examples/migration_config/migration.yaml \
    --config examples/global_config/config.yaml

Configuration

Banshee requires two configuration files:

Global Configuration

The global config file (config.yaml) contains:

• GitHub authentication (Personal Access Token or GitHub App credentials)
• Default values (git email, name, organization, code reviewer)
• Options (logging level, caching, progress saving, merge strategy)

See docs/global_config.md for complete documentation and examples/global_config/config.yaml for a full example.

Migration Configuration

Each migration has its own config file that defines:

• Repository selection (by search query, list, or all repos in org)
• Actions to perform (find/replace, run commands, YAML modifications, add files)
• PR details (title, body, draft status)

See docs/migrations.md for action documentation and examples/migration_config/migration.yaml for a complete example.

Real-World Examples

• Bash script and file template - Run a bash script and add files
• CODEOWNERS addition - Add CODEOWNERS file to repos
• JSON package version bump - Update package.json version, add a field, and remove a deprecated field

Documentation

For more information, see docs/:

• Global Configuration Reference
• Migration Actions Reference