Getting started

gha-deadman needs a public GitHub repository (for free Actions minutes) and a Telegram bot. Nothing runs on your own machines.

1. Fork or copy this repository (public, so the Actions minutes are free).
2. Create a Telegram bot with @BotFather, and get your chat id (send the bot a message, then check https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getUpdates).
3. Add three repository secrets (Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions):

Secret	Value
TARGET_URL	The URL to probe. Any HTTP 2xx/3xx counts as alive; pick a dynamic, uncacheable endpoint so a CDN can't answer for a dead origin.
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN	The bot token from BotFather.
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID	Your numeric chat id.

1. Run the deadman workflow once by hand (Actions > deadman > Run workflow) to confirm the happy path, and once with TARGET_URL pointed at something dead to confirm the alert actually fires. An alert you have never seen fire is not an alert.

Pick a TARGET_URL that is only healthy while the thing you care about is healthy: a status page served by your monitoring server is a good choice, because it goes down when the monitoring does.

The thresholds are in Configuration; what you receive and when is in Usage.