Retire the WIP GitHub App: flaky, superseded by native Draft Pull Requests

[hjmjohnson]

The WIP GitHub App check (https://github.com/marketplace/wip) is flaky and pre-dates GitHub's native Draft Pull Request feature, which now does the same job more reliably. Recommend removing the app org-wide.

Why the WIP app is obsolete

• The app (github.com/wip/app) was installed on InsightSoftwareConsortium on 2018-09-05.
• GitHub's native Draft Pull Request feature entered public beta on 2018-09-19 (two weeks later) and reached general availability on 2019-02-14.
• So the WIP app was filling a real gap when it was installed — GitHub had no built-in "not ready yet" PR state at the time. Draft PRs have made that gap moot for 7+ years: marking a PR as Draft natively disables the merge button, with no check-run, no webhook, and no third-party dependency involved.
• ITK's own contribution convention already leans on draft-PR-by-default (see the WIP: commit-message-prefix discussion in DOC: Clarify WIP: prefix workflow; align AI docs with hook #6080/DOC: Fix WIP: guidance to match kw-commit-msg.py reality #6082) and on Utilities/Hooks/kw-commit-msg.py + the required ghostflow-check-main status check, which independently validate the WIP: commit-message prefix. Neither of those depends on the marketplace app.
• The WIP app's free tier only scans the PR title for "wip"/"work in progress"/🚧 — commit-message or PR-body scanning requires a paid Pro subscription that ITK does not have, so in practice it duplicates a narrow slice of what draft status + ghostflow already cover.

Evidence it's flaky

Observed 2026-07-15: the WIP check-run got stuck at IN_PROGRESS indefinitely (never posting a conclusion) on multiple concurrently open PRs, none of which had "wip" anywhere in the title:

• BUG: Seed entropy threshold calculators with NonpositiveMin #6635 — stuck IN_PROGRESS since 2026-07-14T22:58
• BUG: Fix six read and write defects in TIFFImageIO #6636 — stuck IN_PROGRESS since 2026-07-15T02:29
• BUG: HDF5ImageIO: gate deflate filter on UseCompression flag #6637 — stuck IN_PROGRESS since 2026-07-14T20:59

For comparison, #6630 and #6625 show the check completing normally in ~1 second when the app's webhook delivery doesn't misfire. This is the same class of failure as the open-cdash-org check flakiness previously reported in #6140 / #6033, which was ultimately resolved by an upstream fix (#6139) plus the CDash App owner enabling an "always report success" setting — no equivalent setting is documented for the wip app.

WIP is not currently in the repo's required-status-checks list (only ghostflow-check-main is required), so this flakiness doesn't block merging today — but it does make the PR checks list look red/incomplete and causes recurring "why won't this go green" confusion.

How to remove it

The app is installed at the organization level (repository_selection: "all", installation id 322270), so removal requires a GitHub organization owner on InsightSoftwareConsortium — repo-level admin/maintainer access is not sufficient.

Full removal (affects every repo in the org):

1. Go to https://github.com/organizations/InsightSoftwareConsortium/settings/installations/322270
2. Click "Uninstall"

Scoped removal (keep it for other org repos, remove only from ITK):

1. Same settings page as above
2. Under "Repository access," switch from "All repositories" to "Only select repositories"
3. Deselect ITK (leave other repos selected if they still want it)

Before a full org-wide uninstall, it's worth confirming no other InsightSoftwareConsortium repo actively relies on it, since repository_selection: "all" means every repo in the org currently has this check.

[hjmjohnson]

Current snapshot (2026-07-15 20:21 UTC): 9 of 22 open PRs have the WIP check stuck IN_PROGRESS, none blocked from merging since it isn't a required check, but all showing a non-green checks list.

PR	Title	Stuck since	Elapsed
#6538	COMP: Fix implicit copy deprecated by user-declared destructor	2026-07-01 15:42 UTC	~14 days
#6021	ENH: Add SimpleITK Image to ITK Image conversion support	2026-07-10 17:00 UTC	~5.1 days
#6602	BUG: Smooth structure tensor with an isotropic Gaussian kernel	2026-07-13 06:33 UTC	~2.6 days
#6622	ENH: Make Mattes metric derivatives deterministic with multiple threads	2026-07-14 04:31 UTC	~1.7 days
#6637	BUG: HDF5ImageIO: gate deflate filter on UseCompression flag	2026-07-14 20:59 UTC	~23h
#6635	BUG: Seed entropy threshold calculators with NonpositiveMin	2026-07-14 22:58 UTC	~21h
#6636	BUG: Fix six read and write defects in TIFFImageIO	2026-07-15 02:29 UTC	~18h
#6633	BUG: Fix POISSON step-size collapse and Riemannian max seeds in PatchBasedDenoising	2026-07-15 02:50 UTC	~17h
#6632	BUG: Reject a mis-sized ITK_ImageOrigin series override	2026-07-15 02:59 UTC	~17h

The other 13 open PRs' WIP checks completed normally (typically within ~1 second), e.g. #6645, #6639, #6607, #6596. #6538 is the most extreme case at ~2 weeks stuck.

[dzenanz]

I second this proposed removal.

[hjmjohnson]

Removed!