copier

Update

Action to update copier-templated repo from upstream

Configuration

If you're using a GitHub organization, navigate to your organization's action settings (like https://github.com/organizations/your-org-name-here/settings/actions) and toggle Read and write permissions under Workflow Permissions.

Create a personal access token and store it in an actions secret. In the below example, we've named it WORKFLOW_SECRET.

Token Permissions

Classic PAT: The token needs the repo scope (for private repositories) or public_repo scope (for public repositories), plus workflow scope. The workflow scope is required because copier-templated repos often include .github/workflows/ files, which a token without workflow cannot push.

Fine-grained token: The token needs the following repository permissions:

• Contents — Read and write (to push the update branch)
• Pull requests — Read and write (to create the PR)
• Workflows — Read and write (to push .github/workflows/ files)
• Metadata — Read (automatically granted; needed to read repository info)

Now you can create a workflow like .github/workflow/copier.yml:

name: Copier Updates

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 5 * * 0"

jobs:
  update:
    permissions:
      contents: write
      pull-requests: write
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions-ext/copier/update@main
      with:
        token: ${{ secrets.WORKFLOW_TOKEN }}