trigger-pr-jobs

name	trigger-pr-jobs
description	Trigger missing or failed required status checks for a GitHub pull request. Use when user provides a GitHub PR URL and wants to retrigger failed or missing CI jobs.
argument-hint	<PR-URL>
allowed-tools	["Bash(gh api:*)","Bash(gh pr checks:*)","Bash(gh pr comment:*)","Bash(gh pr view:*)"]

Overview

This skill identifies required status checks that are either missing (no result) or failed on a GitHub pull request, then posts /test commands to retrigger them.

It works for any repo in the kubevirt GitHub org that uses Prow.

Steps

1. Extract PR details

Parse the PR URL from the arguments to get owner, repo, and pr_number. Validate that all three values were successfully extracted and are non-empty. If the URL is malformed or any component is missing, report the error to the user and stop.

2. Get the target branch

gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/{pr_number} --jq '.base.ref'

3. Get required status checks

gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/branches/{branch}/protection/required_status_checks --jq '.contexts[]'

If this returns a 404 (branch protection not configured), treat it as having no required checks. Tell the user that no required status checks are configured for the target branch and stop.

4. Get current check results

Get the status of all checks reported on the PR:

gh pr checks {pr_number} --repo {owner}/{repo} --json name,state,bucket

This returns a JSON array of objects containing the check name and its current state (e.g., SUCCESS, FAILURE, PENDING).

5. Find checks to trigger

Compare the required checks against the checks present on the commit. A check needs triggering if it is:

• Missing: appears in required checks but has no status/check-run at all on the latest commit
• Failed: appears in the PR checks with fail status

Only trigger Prow jobs. Filter to job names starting with pull-. Non-Prow checks cannot be triggered via /test and must be excluded:

• dco, tide — Prow tide/plugin statuses, not jobs
• coverage/coveralls — third-party service
• GitHub Actions checks (e.g. check-vep) — triggered by GitHub, not Prow
• Other third-party checks (e.g. Sourcery review)

If there are no checks to trigger, tell the user and stop.

6. Post /test commands

Post a single comment on the PR with one /test {job_name} line per check that needs triggering:

gh pr comment {pr_number} --repo {owner}/{repo} --body "/test job-1
/test job-2
/test job-3"

Always combine all /test lines into one comment to avoid noise on the PR.

Smart retrigger guidance

Before posting /test commands, consider whether retriggering is likely to help:

• Known flakes (test has < 80% success rate in flakefinder): retriggering will likely succeed — worth doing
• Likely PR-related (test has > 95% success rate): retriggering will likely fail again — suggest the user investigate with analyze-build or test-failure-rate first instead of wasting CI resources
• Infra failures (many unrelated tests failed together): retriggering may help if the infra event was transient

When there are many failures, suggest running test-failure-rate on one of the failed build URLs first to quickly assess whether the failures are flaky. If all failures are known flakes, retrigger confidently. If most are likely PR-related, warn the user before retriggering.

Output

Present a summary table to the user showing:

• Which checks were missing (no result)
• Which checks were failed
• Confirmation that the /test commands were posted, with a link to the comment