The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20241003160514/https://github.blog/changelog/2023-03-15-introducing-the-github-markdown-helpers-public-beta/

Introducing the GitHub Markdown Helpers Public Beta

GitHub users write a lot of Markdown; so much so that we render 2 billion Markdown files everyday; at peak times, we're processing 1,300 Markdown files a second! Any opportunity we have to shave a few seconds off of the Markdown authoring experience on GitHub is time well-spent.

Introducing Markdown Helpers powered by Slash Commands

To use Markdown Helpers, simply type / on Issues, Pull Requests, or Discussion descriptions/comments and use the subsequent dialog to choose from a number of useful Markdown shortcuts.

Use shortcuts like /table to make Markdown tables a breeze, or /details to make selectively showing content to readers much easier than remembering the HTML formatting.

As part of our first release, we've included 6 out-of-the-box features which we hope will help teams author Markdown faster and with less context switching:

  • Code Block
    • Support for language-specific syntax highlighting
  • Details
    • Specify details that the reader can open and close on demand
  • Saved Replies
  • Table
    • Easily insert Markdown Tables
  • Templates
    • Easily populate your Repository's Issue or Pull Request templates directly from Slash Commands!
  • Tasklist
    • Easily insert a Tasklist
    • Note: Tasklists are currently in Private Beta, only users in organizations added to the Private Beta will see this option)

We'd love to hear from you!

Be sure to check out the official Slash Commands documentation for more details on the commands we're releasing today.

Anything we missed? Got an idea for a great Slash Commands feature?

Please leave us some feedback in our Feedback Discussion about how you'd like to use Slash Commands on GitHub.

Create and manage Runner Groups in the Team plan

Starting on March 15, 2023, GitHub Team plan customers will be able to create, manage and delete runner groups to better manage their hosted and self hosted runners.

Enterprise customers will continue to have access to this feature at the Organisation and Enterprise level.

See more

Adding the ability to close GitHub Discussions

GitHub Discussions now supports the ability to close a Discussion. Discussions can be closed for one of three reasons: Resolved, Outdated, or Duplicate. Closing a Discussion is much like closing an Issue or a Pull Request. Users can select a reason for closing in the dropdown. A screenshot of the dropdown is shown below:

Dropdown showing Close Discussion options

The reason for closing is visible to users in two places on the page.

First, in the icon at the top of the Discussion:

Icon at the top of Discussions showing that it is closed

Second, on the events timeline:

The event timeline showing a Discussion being closed

Besides the state of the Discussion being visible on the page, we're also now surfacing the state of a Discussion in search. We're adding three new filters:

is:<closed/opened>
filters out open/closed discussions

reason:<resolved/outdated/duplicate>
returns closed discussions that were closed with the provided reason

closed:<date>
returns discussions closed on a certain date. Supports < and > operators to get discussions closed before or after the date.

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