Jira

jira — Jira Issue Tracker from the Terminal

Interact with Atlassian Jira Cloud via the REST API v3. Search issues, view details, create issues, add comments, count matches, list projects, and transition status.

Setup

1. Generate an API token at id.atlassian.com/manage/api-tokens
2. Set environment variables:

export JIRA_EMAIL="your-email@example.com"       # Atlassian account email
export JIRA_API_TOKEN="YOUR_API_TOKEN"           # from id.atlassian.com
export JIRA_SERVER="https://your-domain.atlassian.net"

Auth is HTTP Basic over base64(email:token) — your email address, never a password (passwords are deprecated for API use). Cloud has no Personal Access Tokens; Bearer PATs are Data Center only. Tokens now expire after at most one year. --help and --dry-run work without credentials.

Essential Commands

me / projects — identity and scope

jira me                       # verify auth; your accountId, timezone
jira projects --json          # all accessible projects

list — search issues

jira list                                                # recent issues
jira list --project PROJ                                 # by project
jira list --jql 'assignee=currentuser() AND status=Open' # custom JQL
jira list --project PROJ --max 120 --json                # >50 auto-pages via startAt offsets

view — issue details

jira view PROJ-123                        # summary, status, assignee, description
jira view PROJ-123 --json                 # machine-readable

Descriptions arrive as Atlassian Document Format (ADF); the CLI extracts plain text for display.

count — fast match total

jira count --jql 'issuetype = Bug AND resolution = Unresolved'   # {"count": N}

Uses POST /search/approximate-count — no fetching rows. JQL itself has no COUNT/aggregation.

create — new issues

jira --yes create --project PROJ --summary "Fix login bug"            # Task (default)
jira --yes create --project PROJ --summary "Crash on startup" --type Bug
jira --yes create --project PROJ --summary "Add dark mode" --type Story --priority High
jira create --project PROJ --summary "Test" --dry-run           # preview payload

Descriptions are sent as ADF documents. Rich formatting beyond plain paragraphs needs raw ADF JSON — see references/rest-issues-and-transitions.md.

comment — add to threads

jira --yes comment PROJ-123 -m "Fixed in latest build"
jira comment PROJ-123 -m "Looking into it" --dry-run

transitions + transition — status changes

jira transitions PROJ-123                     # LIST valid transition IDs first
jira --yes transition PROJ-123 --to "In Progress"   # then apply by name or ID
jira --yes transition PROJ-123 --to Done --resolution Done
jira transition PROJ-123 --to "In Review" --dry-run

Always run transitions first when unsure: IDs differ per workflow and current status, and names repeat across workflows. --resolution satisfies Done-style screens that require one; omitting it yields 400 with an error naming the missing field.

Global Flags

All flags work in any position. Read commands need credentials; --help and --dry-run do not. Mutating commands require an explicit --yes/--force gate:

jira --json list --project PROJ                        # machine output anywhere
jira --dry-run create --project PROJ --summary "Test"  # offline preview
jira --yes create --project PROJ --summary "Test"      # explicit write authorization
jira --quiet list                                      # suppress non-essential output

--json emits one JSON object per command on stdout — pipe to jq for structure.

Multi-Step Pipeline Recipes

Sprint hygiene sweep

Find stalled sprint work, review each ticket, close what's finished:

jira list --jql 'sprint IN openSprints() AND updated < -14d AND resolution = Unresolved' --json \
  | jq -r '.issues[].key' \
  | while read -r key; do jira view "$key"; jira transitions "$key"; done
# after human review, per key:
jira --yes transition "$key" --to Done --resolution Done

The list --json shape is {"total": N, "issues": [{"key", "summary", "status", "assignee", "issuetype", "priority"}]}.

Bulk-close with safe discovery

Transition IDs are workflow-specific — resolve before writing:

for key in $(jira list --jql 'status = "In Progress" AND updated < -30d' --json | jq -r '.issues[].key'); do
  tid=$(jira transitions "$key" --json | jq -r '.transitions[] | select(.status_category=="completed") | .id' | head -1)
  [ -n "$tid" ] && jira --yes transition "$key" --to "$tid" --resolution Done
done

Weekly digest via jq

jira list --jql 'assignee = currentUser() AND updated >= startOfWeek()' --max 50 --json \
  | jq -r '.issues[] | "\(.key)\t\(.status)\t\(.summary)"'

More ready-to-run queries live in references/jql-cookbook.md, organized by role.

Using --json with jq

jira list --project PROJ --json | jq '.issues[] | {key, status, assignee}'
jira count --jql 'project = PROJ' --json | jq .count
jira transitions PROJ-123 --json | jq -r '.transitions[] | "\(.id)=\(.name) -> \(.to_status)"'

Known Gotchas

• Search endpoint duality — this CLI uses the classic /rest/api/3/search with offset pagination (startAt, maxResults, total). Atlassian's enhanced /rest/api/3/search/jql replaces it with an opaque nextPageToken (+ isLast), no startAt, no total, ids-only default fields, and it rejects unbounded JQL (order by key desc alone → 400). The classic endpoint is deprecated ("currently being removed", announced Oct 2024, removal promised after May 1 2025), so expect forced migration; mixing the two pagination models is the classic source of infinite-page-one loops.
• Pagination caps — legacy pages default to maxResults=50; total can shrink between pages, so always tolerate empty pages instead of trusting a stale total.
• Transitions need GET first — transition IDs ("31", "711") belong to one workflow/status; asking for an invalid one returns an empty list, not an error. Done-style screens frequently require resolution; missing required fields come back as 400 with "errors": {"resolution": "..."} naming them.
• ADF everywhere — descriptions, comments, and environment fields take ADF JSON objects in v3 payloads; bare strings are rejected.
• Authentication uses HTTP Basic with email + API token. CAPTCHA lockouts (repeated bad logins) block REST auth entirely; symptom header: X-Seraph-LoginReason: AUTHENTICATION_DENIED. Fix in the browser, not by retrying.
• Rate limits return 429 with Retry-After and RateLimit-Reason headers; the CLI surfaces both but does not auto-retry. Writes also cap at ~20/2s per issue.
• Project keys are case-sensitive in some contexts, though the API generally accepts either case.
• accountId, not username — user fields accept Atlassian account IDs (GDPR migration); usernames were removed from the API.

JQL gotchas

• != excludes empty values — assignee != currentUser() silently drops unassigned issues. Write (assignee != currentUser() OR assignee IS EMPTY).
• AND binds tighter than OR — A OR B AND C parses as A OR (B AND C). Always parenthesize OR groups; without parentheses evaluation is left-to-right.
• No leading wildcards — summary ~ "*bug" forces a full scan; put wildcards after the first characters.
• Filter by project first — the biggest performance lever on large instances (official optimization guidance).
• History operators have a field whitelist — WAS/CHANGED work only on Assignee, Fix Version, Priority, Reporter, Resolution, Status, and silently return nothing on fields without history tracking.
• Relative dates are case-sensitive — -1m is minutes, -1M is months; day-grain expressions evaluate in each user's timezone.
• JQL has no aggregation — no COUNT/SUM; use jira count (approximate-count endpoint) or dashboard gadgets.

When to use

• Any Jira Cloud interaction from the terminal: search, view, create, comment, transition
• Writing, debugging, or optimizing JQL queries — full language reference included
• Sprint reviews, triage sweeps, bulk status hygiene, dashboards and saved-filter design

When not to use

Do not use this skill for GitHub or GitLab issue tracking (use those platforms' own tooling such as gh), for Jira site administration like permission schemes or workflow editing (admin UI territory), for Confluence content, or for building server-side integrations against the Jira API (use official Atlassian SDK docs instead).

Reference Files

Available Scripts

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8+ with requests (stdlib otherwise); invoke as python3 scripts/jira ... if not executable directly
• JIRA_EMAIL + JIRA_API_TOKEN exported for any non-dry-run command (token from https://id.atlassian.com/manage/api-tokens); JIRA_SERVER defaults to https://your-domain.atlassian.net
• jq recommended for --json post-processing

Limitations

• Targets Jira Cloud REST v3; Data Center sites authenticate differently (Bearer PAT) and expose older API surfaces
• The classic search endpoint this CLI uses is deprecated upstream; expect eventual forced migration to /search/jql token paging
• Rich-text creation beyond plain paragraphs requires hand-built ADF JSON
• No auto-retry on 429; loops over many writes should sleep between calls