glab

name	glab
description	GitLab CLI (glab) for managing GitLab resources from the command line. Use this skill when you need to work with merge requests, issues, CI/CD pipelines, projects, or any other GitLab resource. Prefer glab over raw API calls for all GitLab operations.

GitLab CLI (glab)

glab is pre-configured and available in your environment. Use it for all GitLab operations. Run glab <command> --help for detailed flag information.

Quick reference

# Issues
glab issue view <iid>
glab issue list --label "bug,priority::1"
glab issue create --title "title" --description "$(cat /tmp/desc.md)"
glab issue note <iid> -m "comment text"

# Merge requests
glab mr create --push --assignee "@me" --title "fix: title" --description "$(cat /tmp/desc.md)"
glab mr view <iid>
glab mr list --assignee <user>
glab mr update <iid> --description "$(cat /tmp/desc.md)"

# CI/CD
glab ci status
glab ci list
glab ci trace <job-id>
glab ci retry <pipeline-id>

# Machine-readable output
glab mr list --output json | jq '.[].title'
glab mr view <iid> --output json | jq '.title'

Repository remote source

For this repository, read the GitLab remote directly from package.yml. Use repo (or standardRepo when appropriate) as the project remote URL. Do not run extra git remote discovery commands just to find the remote.

Templates: Check .gitlab/merge_request_templates/ and .gitlab/issue_templates/ for project-specific templates.

References: Link issues with #123, MRs with !456, cross-project with group/project#123.

API calls

glab api auto-prepends /api/v4/. Use relative paths:

glab api user                              # NOT /api/v4/user
glab api projects/:id/merge_requests
glab api projects/:id/issues | jq '.[0]'

When using -f for PUT/POST, pass simple key=value pairs. Array bracket syntax like ids[]=1 is not supported:

glab api projects/:id/merge_requests/:iid -X PUT -f "assignee_id=1"

Common mistakes

• glab issue note, not issue comment — use -m for the message body.
• Write long text to a file first — use $(cat /tmp/file.md) for descriptions and comments. Use a << 'EOF' heredoc (single-quoted delimiter) when the content contains backticks or $ to prevent shell expansion.
• Do not inline Markdown with backticks in double quotes — commands like --description "... \code` ..."` may trigger command substitution in zsh and break the content. Prefer one of:
  • --description "$(cat /tmp/mr.md)" with a single-quoted heredoc source
  • --description $'line1\nline2' when you need inline newlines
• \n is not a newline in normal double quotes — use ANSI-C quoting ($'...') or a file/here-doc to preserve real line breaks in MR summaries.
• Always --push on glab mr create — without it the remote branch may not exist and MR creation fails.
• Always assign new MRs to @me — include --assignee "@me" on every glab mr create command.
• No --state on mr list — use --all, --merged, or --closed.
• No --body flag — --body is a gh flag. glab uses --description.
• Labels — --label to add, --unlabel to remove. Scoped labels like status::doing auto-replace within their scope.