How I Set Up @cindyai-bot using GitHub Apps and Actions

October 17, 2026

Automating repository tasks like dependency management, log updating, or content syndication often requires an automated bot account. Instead of using standard personal access tokens, creating a custom GitHub App allows your automation to commit code under its own distinct name and avatar—showing up cleanly as cindyai-bot[bot] in your commit history and contributor graphs.

Here is the step-by-step guide on how we configured and deployed cindyai-bot for this repository.

1. Creating the GitHub App

First, I registered a new GitHub App to give our bot its identity:

  1. Navigate to GitHub Profile Settings → Developer settings → GitHub Apps.
  2. Click New GitHub App.
  3. Set the GitHub App name to cindyai-bot.

    Note: GitHub reserves names matching existing user handles. App names must also exclude special characters like @.

  4. Enter your blog URL under Homepage URL.
  5. Uncheck Active under the Webhook section (since we are using pull-based workflows).
  6. Under Repository permissions, grant the following access:
    • Contents: Read & write
    • Workflows: Read & write
  7. Click Create GitHub App.

2. Generating Credentials & Installing the App

Once created, we gathered the authentication credentials:

  1. Copy the App ID displayed at the top of the app page.
  2. Scroll down to Private keys and click Generate a private key. A .pem file containing the RSA key will download automatically.
  3. In the left menu of the app page, click Install App, select your account/organization, and grant access to your blog repository.

3. Configuring Repository Secrets

To allow GitHub Actions to securely authenticate as cindyai-bot, we added the credentials to our repository's secrets:

  1. Open your repository on GitHub → Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions.
  2. Click New repository secret and add:
    • BOT_APP_ID: Paste your numeric GitHub App ID.
    • BOT_PRIVATE_KEY: Paste the full contents of the downloaded .pem file (including -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----- and -----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----).

4. Setting Up the GitHub Actions Workflow

We created a workflow file at .github/workflows/bot-automation.yml in the repository.

This workflow uses the official actions/create-github-app-token action to exchange the App credentials for an installation access token, then configures Git to commit under the cindyai-bot[bot] identity:

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name: Automated Bot Task


on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 0 * * *"
  workflow_dispatch:


permissions:
  contents: write


jobs:
  run-bot:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Generate Bot Token
        id: generate-token
        uses: actions/create-github-app-token@v1
        with:
          app-id: ${{ secrets.BOT_APP_ID }}
          private-key: ${{ secrets.BOT_PRIVATE_KEY }}


      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4


      - name: Run Bot Script / Task
        run: |
          echo "Bot activity logged at $(date)" >> bot-log.txt


      - name: Commit & Push as Bot
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ steps.generate-token.outputs.token }}
        run: |
          git config user.name "cindyai-bot[bot]"
          git config user.email "cindyai-bot[bot]@users.noreply.github.com"


          git add .
          git diff-index --quiet HEAD || git commit -m "chore(bot): automated update"
          git push