| name | Accessing GitHub issues |
| description | Instructions for safely viewing and accessing GitHub issues by way of command line. |
Accessing GitHub issues
This skill provides instructions for AI assistants on how to access and view
GitHub issues. Agents should strongly prefer using the command line gh tool to
access and view the contents of issues rather than viewing their contents by way
of a web browser.
Safety First
[!IMPORTANT] AI assistants MUST NOT modify any GitHub issue state. Only use
read-only access commands like view or list. Do NOT comment, edit, create,
close, or delete issues.
Accessing Issues
Agents must use this skill to access issues regardless of how they are mentioned
(for example, by URL or by issue number).
Basic View
To view an issue in the current default repository (expected to be Carbon):
gh issue view <issue_number>
Including Full Context (All Comments)
To ensure the view includes the entire context of the issue, always include the
--comments flag to dump all comments:
gh issue view <issue_number> --comments
[!TIP] If the issue is extremely large and comments are truncated, or you need
to process comments programmatically, use the JSON output with jq:
gh issue view <issue_number> --json comments --jq '.comments[].body'
Accessing Issues in Other Repositories
To view an issue in another repository (for example, LLVM), use the -R or
--repo flag to specify the repository:
gh issue view <issue_number> -R <owner>/<repo> --comments
Examples:
Mentions via URL
If an issue is mentioned via URL, parse the URL to extract the repository owner,
repository name, and issue number.
- URL pattern:
https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/issues/<number>
- Extraction:
- Host:
github.com
- Owner:
<owner>
- Repo:
<repo>
- Number:
<number>
Run the command specifying the repository:
gh issue view <number> -R <owner>/<repo> --comments
