Should support questions go in GitHub issues or a helpdesk?
Support questions belong in a helpdesk, and bugs belong in GitHub issues. An issue tracker is a list of work for maintainers; a question is a request for an answer that usually exists in the docs already. Send questions to a desk that answers from the docs and turns the rest into tickets, so the tracker stays bugs and features.
Last updated: October 2026 · View as Markdown
Why does this keep happening?
"How do I install this on Windows" is not a bug. Filed as an issue it sits open for a month, gets a drive-by answer, and buries the real regression report under it. Every maintainer has closed fifty of these with "please read the docs".
GitHub Discussions helps, and GitHub describes it as open-ended conversation about the project's direction. It is still a place where a question waits for a volunteer, with no owner, no answer from the docs, and no way to know what was never answered.
A support desk is the third place: questions get answered from the documentation automatically, the rest get an owner, and the tracker is left to engineering.
How do I fix it, step by step?
Write the rule into the issue template
One line at the top: bugs and feature requests here; questions go to the help link. People follow the path they are shown.
Publish the setup and FAQ pages as articles
Installation, configuration, the five questions from the last month of issues. Paste them into the DeskCrew knowledge base; the desk answers from those and only those.
Put the widget on the docs site and the bot in Discord
One line in the docs config, one bot in the server. A reader asks on the page they are stuck on, or in the channel, and gets the documented answer in seconds.
Convert the questions that still arrive as issues
Close with the help link, or move the text to a ticket. After a month the template line has done most of the work.
Turn unanswered tickets into docs
A question the desk could not answer is a docs page you have not written. Write it, and the desk answers it next time without a human.
What is true about this today?
| Fact | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| What GitHub says Discussions is for | Conversations about the project's direction and future in an open-ended format; open-ended issues can be converted into discussions | GitHub Docs, About discussions, checked October 2026 |
| Service leaders who say at least a fifth of their tickets are repetitive but easy | 80% | DigitalGenius and Canam Research survey, via DestinationCRM, September 2018 |
| Customers who want to resolve as many issues as possible on their own | 69% | Zendesk, self-service research, July 2021 |
| DeskCrew free plan | 10 AI answers and about 100 conversations a month, no card | DeskCrew pricing, October 2026 |
What changes, and what does not?
Discussions still has a place
Open-ended design conversations belong there, which is what GitHub built it for. The desk takes the "how do I" questions, not the "should we" ones.
A desk does not replace a maintainer
It answers the documented questions and routes the rest with an owner. Someone still reads the queue, once a day rather than all day.
Free for most projects
The free plan covers the widget, the Discord bot, ticketing, the help center and ten AI answers a month, which fits most projects. A company growing around the project moves to Pro at $29 a month.
What else do people ask?
Why not just use GitHub issues for support?
Because "how do I install this" is not an issue, and every maintainer knows it. Support questions bury real bugs and burn triage time, and the person asking waits for a volunteer who may never come. A desk absorbs the questions and answers the documented ones instantly; your tracker keeps the engineering work and nothing else.
Is it free for open-source projects?
The free plan covers the website widget, the Discord bot for one server, ticketing, the public help center and an AI answer allowance, with no card and no time limit, which fits most projects. Paid plans exist for when a company grows around the project and wants email-to-ticket, more AI answers or white-label.
Does it work in Discord, where our users actually ask?
Yes, natively. Questions in your server become ticket threads, maintainers reply with /reply, and the AI answers the documented questions in the channel before a human sees them. Members never leave Discord and need no account; a ticket carries their Discord identity and an optional email address for reachback later.
What about questions that turn out to be bugs?
A ticket that turns out to be a bug gets filed as an issue by the maintainer who read it, with the reproduction already written by the reporter. That is the right direction: a human decides what is a bug, rather than every reporter guessing. The ticket links to the issue so the reporter is told when it ships.
Will the AI answer wrongly about our project?
It answers only from the articles you published, which for most projects are the docs pages pasted in. If the docs are right, the answer is right. If nothing in them covers the question, it says so and opens a ticket. It cannot invent an installation step or a config flag, which is the failure you would otherwise get.
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