Linear Awareness

Linear Skills Guide

You have specialized Linear issue management skills. Use these for structured ticket workflows during debugging investigations.

Decision Tree

Skills vs Agents

Simple issue fetch or update? → Use Linear skills

• linear-issues - Fetch, list, search issues (single linearis command)
• linear-update - Update issue, add comments
• Example: "Get details for ENG-1234"
• Use when: Single issue, straightforward query/update

Complex investigation requiring analysis? → Use Task tool with Linear agents (conserves context)

• linear-locator - Find issues by criteria, save to /tmp
• linear-analyzer - Extract debugging context, parse technical details
• linear-pattern-finder - Find patterns across issues, detect recurring problems
• Use when: Multi-issue analysis, pattern detection, trend analysis

When to Use Which Agent

Just need to find issues broadly? → Use linear-locator agent only

• Lists/searches issues by team, label, state, text
• Saves filtered results to /tmp
• Example: "Find all FileB-related issues across teams"

Investigating single issue for debugging? → Use linear-locator + linear-analyzer agents

• Locator: Find issue and related issues
• Analyzer: Extract error messages, URLs, technical details
• Example: "Analyze ENG-1234 for debugging context"

Need to find patterns or recurring problems? → Use all three: linear-locator + linear-analyzer + linear-pattern-finder

• Locator: Fetch issues by criteria
• Analyzer: Parse each issue for technical details
• Pattern-finder: Correlate across issues, find recurring themes, temporal trends
• Example: "Find recurring VCS permission errors across last 2 months"

Adding debugging findings to a ticket? → Use linear-update skill

• Better than: Running raw linearis comments create commands
• Example: "Add root cause analysis to ENG-1234"

Updating issue status after investigation? → Use linear-update skill

• Includes: status, priority, labels updates
• Example: "Mark ENG-1234 as In Progress"

Available Linear Tools

When to Use Raw linearis

Only use linearis CLI directly when:

• Running one-off commands not covered by skills
• User explicitly requests a specific linearis command
• Creating new issues (linearis issues create)
• Managing projects, teams, users (non-issue operations)
• Debugging the skill itself

For systematic ticket workflows (read → debug → update), use the specialized skills above.

Common linearis Commands

Covered by skills:

• linearis issues read → Use linear-issues
• linearis issues list → Use linear-issues
• linearis issues search → Use linear-issues
• linearis comments create → Use linear-update
• linearis issues update → Use linear-update

Not covered yet (use directly):

• linearis issues create (issue creation)
• linearis projects, linearis teams, linearis users (non-issue operations)

Authentication

Check linearis CLI is available and authenticated:

linearis --version
linearis issues list --limit 1

Note: Set LINEARIS_API_TOKEN environment variable or use --api-token flag.

Integration with Debugging Workflow

Linear skills integrate with platform debugging:

Workflow:

1. linear-issues → Fetch ticket context
2. Platform investigation → Use GCP and K8s skills for debugging
3. linear-update → Add findings to ticket
4. linear-update → Update status to "Done"

Example:

User: "Debug issue ENG-1234"
Claude: [Checks linear-awareness] → Uses linear-issues
        [Investigates using GCP/K8s skills]
        [Checks linear-awareness] → Uses linear-update

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