github-ops

name

github-ops

description

GitHub repository operations via `gh` CLI — issue triage, PR management, CI failure debugging, release preparation, and security monitoring. Use this skill whenever the user says "check GitHub", "triage issues", "review PRs", "merge", "release", "CI is broken", "which PRs are stale", "deal with Dependabot", or when any repo-operational task needs the `gh` CLI rather than raw git. Also use when debugging failed GitHub Actions runs or preparing a release changelog. Do NOT trigger for local git operations (branching, merging, committing) — use `git-workflow` for those.

GitHub Operations

Operational GitHub work via the gh CLI — issue and PR hygiene, CI triage, releases, security alerts. This is the companion to git-workflow (local git) for everything that happens on the remote.

When to Activate

• Triaging issues (classifying, labeling, responding, deduplicating)
• Managing PRs (review status, CI checks, stale PRs, merge readiness)
• Debugging failing CI runs on GitHub Actions
• Preparing releases and changelogs
• Monitoring Dependabot and secret-scanning alerts
• User says "check GitHub", "triage issues", "review PRs", "ci is red", "create release", "dependabot"

Tool Requirements

• gh CLI authenticated via gh auth login (Kadmon is authenticated as Kadmon7)
• Repo must be a GitHub remote — the skill is no-op on GitLab/Bitbucket

Issue Triage

Classify each issue by type and priority:

• Types: bug, feature-request, question, documentation, enhancement, duplicate, invalid, good-first-issue
• Priority: critical (breaking / security), high (significant impact), medium (nice to have), low (cosmetic)

Workflow

1. Read the issue title, body, and all comments
2. Search for duplicates by keyword
3. Apply labels via gh issue edit
4. For questions: post a helpful response
5. For bugs with missing info: ask for reproduction steps
6. For likely good-first-issues: add the good-first-issue label
7. For duplicates: comment with a link to the original, add duplicate, close

# Find duplicates
gh issue list --search "keyword" --state all --limit 20

# Label
gh issue edit <number> --add-label "bug,high-priority"

# Comment
gh issue comment <number> --body "Thanks for reporting. Could you share reproduction steps?"

# Close as duplicate
gh issue close <number> --reason "not planned" --comment "Duplicate of #123"

PR Management

Review checklist per PR

1. CI status: gh pr checks <number>
2. Mergeability: gh pr view <number> --json mergeable
3. Age and last activity
4. Flag PRs >5 days with no review
5. For community PRs: verify tests and conventions compliance

Stale policy

Target	Threshold	Action
Issue with no activity	14 days	Add stale label, comment asking for update
PR with no activity	7 days	Comment asking if still active
Stale issue, no response	30 days	Close with closed-stale label

# Stale issues
gh issue list --label "stale" --state open

# Quiet PRs
gh pr list --json number,title,updatedAt \
  --jq '.[] | select(.updatedAt < "2026-03-01")'

CI/CD Triage

When CI fails:

1. gh run view <run-id> --log-failed — see the failing step
2. Classify: real failure vs flaky test
3. Real failure → identify root cause, suggest fix
4. Flaky → note the pattern for later (don't just rerun blindly)

# List recent failed runs
gh run list --status failure --limit 10

# Failed step logs
gh run view <run-id> --log-failed

# Rerun failed jobs only
gh run rerun <run-id> --failed

Anti-pattern: rerunning a failed CI without diagnosing the cause. A flaky test that never gets investigated becomes a blocker later.

Release Management

Preparation

1. Verify main is green
2. Review merged PRs since the last release
3. Generate a changelog from PR titles
4. Create the release

# List merged PRs since a date
gh pr list --state merged --base main --search "merged:>2026-03-01"

# Create a release with auto-generated notes from merged PRs
gh release create v1.2.0 --title "v1.2.0" --generate-notes

# Pre-release
gh release create v1.3.0-rc1 --prerelease --title "v1.3.0 RC1"

Changelog quality

• Group by type (Features, Fixes, Chore)
• Omit trivial commits (typos, formatting-only)
• Call out breaking changes at the top

Security Monitoring

# Dependabot alerts
gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/dependabot/alerts \
  --jq '.[].security_advisory.summary'

# Secret-scanning alerts
gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/secret-scanning/alerts \
  --jq '.[].state'

# List open dependency bumps
gh pr list --label "dependencies" --json number,title

Rules of thumb:

• Review and auto-merge safe minor/patch bumps weekly
• Flag any CRITICAL/HIGH alert immediately
• Never ignore a secret-scanning alert — rotate the credential, don't just close the alert

Quality Gate

Before declaring a GitHub-ops task complete:

• All triaged issues carry appropriate labels
• No PRs older than 7 days without a review or comment
• CI failures investigated (not just rerun)
• Releases include accurate changelogs
• Security alerts acknowledged and tracked

Integration

• kody agent (sonnet) — primary owner. kody handles git and review workflows; this skill extends that to the remote GitHub surface. When a user says "is this ready to merge", kody reads PR status via gh and applies the review checklist.
• git-workflow skill — sibling. git-workflow covers local git (branches, commits, rebase, conflicts); github-ops covers everything that happens on the remote (issues, PRs, CI, releases).
• rules/common/git-workflow.md — authoritative rules for commit format and review tier; gate-keeps any PR this skill opens or merges.
• /chekpoint command — entry point. kody can load this skill during Phase 2 when the user is preparing a PR or release.

no_context Application

Every GitHub-ops claim must come from a real gh call. "The PR looks merge-ready" is not enough — cite gh pr checks 42 showing green, gh pr view 42 --json mergeable showing MERGEABLE, and the approving review count. "CI is flaky" needs an actual pattern across multiple runs, not a single failed execution. The no_context principle here means: every state claim about the remote is backed by a gh command output, not a memory of what was true yesterday.