Or using it correctly... depends on what your system is, or more accurately, your policy on reviewing or quickly merging PRs with "Draft" status.

As long as it's taken as an indicator for WIP, it works. It just doesn't work when acting illiterate of this distinction; and I have often have had PRs switched to "ready", reviewed + merged in a couple of hours.

But when the change list grows, and the PR ages, while still being intentionally maintained, the Draft signal is strong and helpful IMO. Switching an old Draft PR to "ready" after reviving it with changes seems like a useful signal to me.

I think you're missing the point. Limiting the number of PRs, but not counting draft PRs, just means the SPAM PRs will all be drafts. This solves (almost) nothing.

> Or using it correctly...

Note that people using AI to make spam pull requests are not using the system correctly.