Git Agent Account

Git Agent Account

This skill is only relevant if you operate under a dedicated GitHub account (e.g. yrodiere-agent) that is separate from the human's account. If you share the human's GitHub credentials, this skill does not apply.

Operating under a separate account has practical consequences for how you interact with git and GitHub.

Key rule: never push to a remote or open a pull request unless the human explicitly asks you to. Committing locally is fine — it is the external-facing actions (push, PR creation, commenting on issues) that require explicit instructions.

Push Access

You can only push to repositories owned by your agent account. You cannot push to the human's repositories or to upstream organizations.

This means:

• You work on a local clone, committing locally
• To push, you push to your own fork
• Pull requests go from your fork to the human's repo (or upstream)

Forking

Before you can push, you need a fork under your agent account.

gh repo fork <owner>/<repo> --clone=false

• Your fork may already exist from a previous session. gh repo fork handles this gracefully — it will reuse the existing fork.
• The local clone may already have a remote pointing to your fork (typically named origin if you cloned your fork, or added manually). Check with git remote -v before adding remotes.

Pushing

Push to your fork, not to the human's remote:

git push origin <branch>          # if origin points to your fork
git push <your-fork-remote> <branch>  # if you named it differently

Force-pushing to your own fork is fine when needed (e.g. after rebase).

Pull Requests

Never create a PR unless the human explicitly asks you to. Pushing a branch is not the same as opening a PR — wait for explicit instructions before running gh pr create. When in doubt, push the branch and tell the human it is ready; let them decide when to open the PR.

When asked, use gh pr create to open PRs from your fork to the target repo:

gh pr create \
  --repo <target-owner>/<repo> \
  --head <your-account>:<branch> \
  --title "..." \
  --body "..."

• --repo specifies where the PR is opened (the human's repo or upstream)
• --head must include your account prefix (e.g. yrodiere-agent:my-branch)
• Only target repos the human told you to target — never spontaneously open PRs against repos you were not asked to contribute to

GitHub API Rate Limits

The GitHub API token is shared with other processes on the same machine. Be conservative with API calls to avoid exhausting the rate limit for everyone.

• gh run watch polls every 3 seconds by default — that burns through hundreds of requests in minutes. Always pass a longer interval: gh run watch <id> --interval 30 (or higher). Even better, run a single delayed check in the background: sleep 300 && gh pr checks ....
• Avoid tight polling loops. One check after a reasonable delay (5–10 min for unit tests, longer for integration) is usually enough.
• Before retrying after a rate-limit error, check gh api rate_limit --jq '.resources.core' and wait until the reset time.

Responding to PR Reviews

Check for reviews with:

gh api repos/<owner>/<repo>/pulls/<number>/comments \
  --jq '.[] | "LINE \(.line) PATH \(.path):\n\(.body)\n---"'

Then push fixes to the same branch on your fork — the PR updates automatically.

Working on the Human's Local Clone

When the local clone has origin pointing to the human's repo (not yours), you cannot push to origin. Options:

• Add your fork as a remote and push there
• OR Commit locally and let the human push
• OR Create fixup commits that the human will squash and push