Code complexity / cost stats on every PR

A GitHub Actions workflow that runs

scc

(Sloc, Cloc and Code) over the repo on each pull request and posts the results — including a COCOMO estimated cost/effort to build the codebase — as a single sticky comment that updates in place on every push. Drop-in workflow:

templates/code-complexity.yml

What you get

scc

prints a per-language table (files, lines, code, comments, blanks, complexity) plus, with

--avg-wage

, a COCOMO block: estimated person-months, schedule, people, and a dollar cost to develop. The workflow wraps that in a fenced block and posts it as a PR comment titled 📊 Code Complexity Analysis.

It reports the whole codebase at the PR's head, not the diff — it's a "what's this project worth / how big it is" signal, not a per-PR delta.

Install

Copy

templates/code-complexity.yml

.github/workflows/code-complexity.yml

. It works as-is on

ubuntu-latest

; the only thing you'll likely change is the

AVG_WAGE

WAGE_LABEL

workflow env (see Customise).

How it works (the parts that matter)

Trigger:
```
pull_request: [opened, synchronize, reopened]
```
— runs on open and every push. Kept as its own workflow so it always runs even when other workflows honour a
```
[skip ci]
```
-style marker; these stats are informational.
Permissions: a PR comment is posted via the Issues API, so
```
pull-requests: write
```
is what actually authorises the create/update;
```
issues: write
```
is included belt-and-suspenders. (Both are in the template.)
Sticky comment: the body starts with a hidden marker
```

```
. The script lists existing comments, finds the one with that marker, and updates it (else creates one) — so a PR keeps exactly one stats comment that refreshes instead of stacking new ones each push.
Concurrency:
```
cancel-in-progress: true
```
keyed on the PR number (
```
github.event.pull_request.number
```
) — a new push kills the in-flight run so you don't race two comment updates. Keyed on the number, not
```
head_ref
```
, so two forks sharing a branch name can't cancel each other.
COCOMO cost:
```
scc --avg-wage <annual>
```
drives the cost figure. The number is unitless to scc — it's read in your currency. The template defines
```
AVG_WAGE
```
(
```
360000
```
, HKD 30,000/month) and
```
WAGE_LABEL
```
once as workflow
```
env
```
, so the number scc uses and the label in the comment can't drift — change the salary in one place.

Customise

Want to…	Change
Use a different currency / salary	the `AVG_WAGE` and `WAGE_LABEL` workflow `env` (one place — the comment label reads `WAGE_LABEL` )
Exclude more build/generated dirs	`--exclude-dir` list (comma-separated). scc honours `.gitignore` by default; this is for output that isn't ignored
Pin / upgrade scc	`SCC_VERSION` in the install step
Run on ARM runners	swap the tarball to `scc_Linux_arm64.tar.gz` and use an ARM runner (e.g. `ubuntu-24.04-arm` )
Count only part of a monorepo	add a path arg to `scc` (e.g. `scc apps/web` )

Gotchas

Fork PRs can't post the comment. For PRs from forks,
```
pull_request
```
runs with a read-only token and no repo secrets, so the comment API call would 403. Declaring
```
pull-requests: write
```
does not override this — GitHub enforces read-only on the token itself for fork-triggered runs. The template guards the whole job with
```
if: github.event.pull_request.head.repo.full_name == github.repository
```
, so on fork PRs the job skips cleanly (green check) instead of failing red — and no compute is wasted running scc for a comment that can't post. Options: (a) accept that stats only post for same-repo branches (fine for solo/team repos — the common case; this is the template default); or (b) split into two workflows — compute on
```
pull_request
```
(no secrets, untrusted code), upload
```
scc-output.txt
```
as an artifact, then comment from a separate
```
workflow_run
```
job that has write access. Do not just switch this workflow to
```
pull_request_target
```
: that runs with a write token in the base repo context, and checking out + running fork code there is a token-exfiltration footgun.
Long output is truncated, not failed. GitHub caps a comment body at 65,536 characters. Default scc output (a per-language table) is tiny, but
```
--by-file
```
on a big repo could blow past it, which would 422 the step — so the template trims to ~64k with a "truncated" note and the comment still posts.
Pin scc; don't track
latest
. A
```
latest
```
download can change scc's output format and silently reshape every PR comment. The template pins
```
SCC_VERSION
```
and verifies the tarball against a pinned
```
SCC_SHA256
```
(
```
sha256sum -c
```
) before running it, so a swapped/compromised release asset fails the run instead of executing in CI. When you bump the version — or switch to the arm64 asset — update the checksum from that release's
```
checksums.txt
```
.
Match the tarball to the runner arch. The release asset is arch-specific (
```
scc_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz
```
vs
```
_arm64
```
). The wrong one fails to run.
Paginate when finding the sticky comment. A busy PR can have more comments than one API page; without pagination, the marker comment on a later page is missed, and you get duplicates. The template uses
```
github.paginate(...)
```
and matches the marker with
```
startsWith
```
(not
```
includes
```
) so a human comment that merely quotes the marker isn't mistaken for the bot's and overwritten.
Token:
GH_TOKEN || github.token
. The template prefers a
```
GH_TOKEN
```
secret (a PAT/bot you already use) and falls back to github.token
— the canonical reference to the built-in
```
GITHUB_TOKEN
```
. Prefer
```
github.token
```
over
```
secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN
```
; the built-in token is enough for same-repo comments given the permissions above.
COCOMO is illustrative. It's the basic COCOMO model (COCOMO I, Organic mode) on LOC — a fun, relative signal of size/effort, not a real valuation. Don't quote it as the literal worth of the code.

Provenance

Generalised from the working

code-complexity.yml

used in production repos (a production app, a production monorepo): same scc + COCOMO + sticky-comment approach, hardened here with version pinning + checksum verification,

persist-credentials: false

, comment pagination, a portable

ubuntu-latest

runner, and the fork-PR security note.

code-complexity-stats-pr

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content