Gh Issue Management

GitHub Issue Management

Purpose

Consolidates all issue-related operations into a single, token-efficient skill. This reduces context overhead and enables multi-action workflows in fewer turns.

1. Safety & Verification

• Mandatory Context: Ensure gh-verifying-context has been run and confirmed by the user.
• Human-in-the-Loop: You MUST present all state-changing commands (create, edit, close, comment, transfer, lock) and their parameters to the user before execution.
• Sensitivity Check: Do not include internal credentials, server IPs, or proprietary data in issue titles, bodies, or comments.
• Repository Check: Confirm the target repository name and owner with the user.

2. Common Workflows

Workflow: Create and Configure Issue

Creates an issue and sets labels, assignees, and projects in one step.

Command:

gh issue create --title "Title" --body "Description" --label "bug,triage" --assignee "@me" --project "Roadmap"

Workflow: Update Multiple Metadata Fields

Refines an existing issue's title, body, and associations.

Command:

gh issue edit <issue-number> --title "New Title" --body "New Body" --add-label "bug" --remove-label "needs-investigation" --add-assignee "@me" --milestone "v1.0"

Workflow: List and Search

Retrieves issues based on state, labels, or keywords.

Command:

# List open bugs
gh issue list --state open --label "bug" --json number,title,updatedAt

# Search across repositories for unprojected issues
gh search issues --no-project --state open --json number,title,repository

Workflow: Engagement and Lifecycle

Comments on, closes, or transfers issues.

Command:

# Post a comment
gh issue comment <issue-number> --body "Implementation finished."

# Close with reason
gh issue close <issue-number> --reason "completed"

Workflow: Manage Sub-issues

Manages parent-child relationships between issues. Since sub-issues are not yet first-class flags in gh issue commands, these operations use gh api directly.

ID Disambiguation: Sub-issue API calls require the database ID (an internal integer), not the issue number shown in the UI. Retrieve it with:

gh issue view <issue-number> --json id --jq '.id'

Commands:

# List sub-issues of a parent
gh api /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{issue_number}/sub_issues

# Add an existing issue as a sub-issue
gh api --method POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{parent_number}/sub_issues \
  -F sub_issue_id={sub_issue_id}

# Remove a sub-issue from its parent
gh api --method DELETE /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{parent_number}/sub_issue \
  -F sub_issue_id={sub_issue_id}

# Reprioritize a sub-issue within the parent's list
gh api --method PATCH /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{parent_number}/sub_issues/priority \
  -F sub_issue_id={sub_issue_id} \
  -F after_id={after_id}

3. Reference Table of Actions

See references/commands.md for the full action reference table, sub-issues API endpoints, and list of state-changing commands that require approval.

4. Output Handling

Always prefer --json for structured data when listing or viewing. Use jq for extraction if needed.