Jinx is the operations bot for RLadies+. It runs on GitHub Actions as jinx[bot], with a Cloudflare Worker bridging Slack to the same machinery.

Organisers reach Jinx two ways — by typing /jinx ... in Slack, or by posting /jinx ... as a comment on any issue or PR in an RLadies+ repo. Either way, the same R package answers.

Day to day, Jinx handles organiser onboarding, directory PR review, chapter monitoring, announcements, reports, event sync, translation checks, and Slack invites for the RLadies+ community.

Jinx ships a handful of reusable GitHub Actions workflows that any RLadies+ repo can adopt with a few lines of YAML. They're in .github/workflows/ and start with reusable-:

Every reusable runs inside the ghcr.io/rladies/jinx-bot container. For the runner to pull that image, the calling workflow must grant the job packages: read. The simplest pattern is a workflow-level block:

permissions:
  contents: read
  packages: read

Without this, you'll see Error response from daemon: denied at the docker pull step and the job fails before the welcome/thank/checklist runs.

JINX_APP_ID and JINX_PRIVATE_KEY are configured as org-level secrets in rladies, so any repo in the org inherits them automatically — no per-repo configuration needed for the secrets themselves. The jinx GitHub App does need to be installed on the calling repo, which is true org-wide today.

A minimal caller looks like:

name: Hello on PR or Issue

on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, closed]
  issues:
    types: [opened]

permissions:
  contents: read
  packages: read

jobs:
  welcome:
    if: github.event.action == 'opened'
    uses: rladies/jinx/.github/workflows/reusable-welcome-contributor.yml@main
    secrets:
      JINX_APP_ID: ${{ secrets.JINX_APP_ID }}
      JINX_PRIVATE_KEY: ${{ secrets.JINX_PRIVATE_KEY }}

  thank:
    if: github.event_name == 'pull_request' && github.event.action == 'closed' && github.event.pull_request.merged == true
    uses: rladies/jinx/.github/workflows/reusable-thank-contributor.yml@main
    secrets:
      JINX_APP_ID: ${{ secrets.JINX_APP_ID }}
      JINX_PRIVATE_KEY: ${{ secrets.JINX_PRIVATE_KEY }}

Jinx can hand content reviews to GitHub Copilot, guided by the rladies/grimoire review gates (brand, blog, social, translation). It's a two-step setup per repo:

1. Sync the gates once — run /jinx copilot-sync <owner/repo> (or jinx::copilot_sync_repo()). This opens a PR adding .github/copilot-instructions.md and path-scoped .github/instructions/*.instructions.md so Copilot's review speaks the RLadies+ brand and voice. Re-run to refresh when grimoire changes.
2. Wire the reusable so Copilot is asked to review every content PR.

The Copilot reusable needs pull-requests: write (to request the reviewer) on top of the usual contents: read / packages: read:

name: Copilot review

on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, ready_for_review, synchronize]
    paths:
      - "content/**"

permissions:
  contents: read
  packages: read
  pull-requests: write

jobs:
  copilot-review:
    uses: rladies/jinx/.github/workflows/reusable-copilot-review.yml@main
    secrets:
      JINX_APP_ID: ${{ secrets.JINX_APP_ID }}
      JINX_PRIVATE_KEY: ${{ secrets.JINX_PRIVATE_KEY }}

On demand, organisers can also run /jinx review brand|blog|social|translation <pr> (e.g. /jinx review blog rladies/rladies.github.io#42) from Slack or a GitHub comment.

Beyond the reusable GitHub Actions workflows above, Jinx's Cloudflare Worker exposes a small authenticated HTTP API so other RLadies+ repos can get Cloudflare-backed capabilities without holding their own Cloudflare credentials. First consumer: rladies/quarto-rladies-report, for AI-drafted report prose.

Both routes require Authorization: Bearer <JINX_API_KEY> — ask a Jinx admin for the key rather than requesting a Cloudflare token of your own. A missing or wrong key gets a 401. See .github/AGENTS.md's "Endpoint conventions" and "Worker secrets" sections for the underlying implementation and secret names.

Cloudflare Web Analytics doesn't need an HTTP route: jinx::rum_collect_analytics() is exported directly from this R package (see R/website-rum.R) — a calling repo can add jinx as a dependency and call it, rather than going through the Worker at all.

Jinx runs a small URL shortener at l.rladies.org. Short links can be created two ways:

• In Slack, /jinx shorten <url> [slug] — restricted to the organisers workspace, since an open shortener would be an open-redirect/phishing risk if anyone in the (openly joinable) community workspace could mint links.
• Via the HTTP API above (POST /links/shorten), for other RLadies+ repos.

Requesting a short link for a destination that already has one returns the existing short link rather than creating a duplicate — including when a custom slug is requested for an already-shortened destination.

The pkgdown site is split by audience:

• For organisers using Jinx — Getting started and The Jinx Slack app.
• For admins maintaining Jinx — Operating Jinx and How Jinx is built.
• For everyone — day-to-day RLadies+ organising lives in the RLadies+ Guide; data handling is in PRIVACY.md.