Issues created outside templates don't receive `needs-triage` label, bypassing all triage automation

[pahud]

Describe the bug

Issues opened without using the bug report template (e.g., via blank issue, GitHub API, or AI-assisted tools like Claude Code) never receive the needs-triage label. Since the issue-triage-manager workflow requires needs-triage via included-labels, these issues are silently skipped — no area label, no assignee, no triage visibility.

This is becoming more common as contributors use AI coding assistants that create well-structured issues directly via markdown/API rather than through the GitHub issue form UI.

Affected workflow

issue-label-assign.yml — the issue-triage-manager job has:

included-labels: "[needs-triage]"

The needs-triage label is only applied by the issue form templates (e.g., bug-report.yml declares labels: [bug, needs-triage]). Any issue that doesn't go through a template gets zero labels and is invisible to triage.

Examples

• aws-cdk-lib: bundled brace-expansion@5.0.3 vulnerable (GHSA-f886-m6hf-6m8v / CVE-2026-33750) #37390 — valid bug report, no labels, no assignee
• aws-ecs: CfnTaskDefinition#inferenceAccelerators deprecation warning still fires on FargateTaskDefinition in v2.245.0 (regression from #34895) #37418 — valid regression report (filed via Claude Code), no labels, no assignee

Both are legitimate issues that should have been triaged but were missed entirely.

Proposed fix

Add a lightweight workflow that applies needs-triage to any newly opened issue that has no labels:

name: "Ensure triage label"
on:
  issues:
    types: [opened]

jobs:
  ensure-triage-label:
    if: join(github.event.issue.labels.*.name, '') == ''
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      issues: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/github-script@v7
        with:
          script: |
            await github.rest.issues.addLabels({
              owner: context.repo.owner,
              repo: context.repo.repo,
              issue_number: context.issue.number,
              labels: ['needs-triage']
            });

This ensures every new issue enters the triage pipeline regardless of how it was created, while preserving the existing template-based labeling for issues filed through the forms.

Regression Issue

• Select this option if this issue appears to be a regression.

Last Known Working CDK Library Version

No response

Expected Behavior

new issues get labeled

Current Behavior

not labelled

Reproduction Steps

as description

Possible Solution

No response

Additional Information/Context

No response

AWS CDK Library version (aws-cdk-lib)

all

AWS CDK CLI version

all

Node.js Version

all

OS

all

Language

TypeScript

Language Version

No response

Other information

No response

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