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 --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'

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.
• Always --push on glab mr create — without it the remote branch may not exist and MR creation fails.
• 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.