GitHub Skill

Use the gh CLI to interact with GitHub repositories, issues, PRs, and CI.

When to Use

✅ USE this skill when:

• Checking PR status, reviews, or merge readiness
• Viewing CI/workflow run status and logs
• Creating, closing, or commenting on issues
• Creating or merging pull requests
• Querying GitHub API for repository data
• Listing repos, releases, or collaborators

When NOT to Use

❌ DON'T use this skill when:

• Local git operations (commit, push, pull, branch) → use git directly
• Non-GitHub repos (GitLab, Bitbucket, self-hosted) → different CLIs
• Cloning repositories → use git clone
• Reviewing actual code changes → use coding-agent skill
• Complex multi-file diffs → use coding-agent or read files directly

Setup

# Authenticate (one-time)
gh auth login

# Verify
gh auth status

When the gateway HOME differs from the operator HOME

OpenClaw agent shells often run with a different HOME than the user that ran gh auth login (per-agent codex homes, systemd User= services, sudo). gh looks up its config under $GH_CONFIG_DIR, then $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gh, then $HOME/.config/gh, so the agent shell can report not logged into any GitHub hosts even when the operator login is intact.

To point the gateway at the canonical gh config, set GH_CONFIG_DIR on the service environment, e.g.

# Gateway service env file (example: ~/.openclaw/gateway.systemd.env)
GH_CONFIG_DIR=/path/to/operator/.config/gh

then restart the gateway. openclaw doctor warns when it detects an authenticated hosts.yml outside the agent process's effective gh config dir.

Common Commands

Pull Requests

# List PRs
gh pr list --repo owner/repo

# Check CI status
gh pr checks 55 --repo owner/repo

# View PR details
gh pr view 55 --repo owner/repo

# Create PR
gh pr create --title "feat: add feature" --body "Description"

# Merge PR
gh pr merge 55 --squash --repo owner/repo

Issues

# List issues
gh issue list --repo owner/repo --state open

# Create issue
gh issue create --title "Bug: something broken" --body "Details..."

# Close issue
gh issue close 42 --repo owner/repo

CI/Workflow Runs

# List recent runs
gh run list --repo owner/repo --limit 10

# View specific run
gh run view <run-id> --repo owner/repo

# View failed step logs only
gh run view <run-id> --repo owner/repo --log-failed

# Re-run failed jobs
gh run rerun <run-id> --failed --repo owner/repo

API Queries

# Get PR with specific fields
gh api repos/owner/repo/pulls/55 --jq '.title, .state, .user.login'

# List all labels
gh api repos/owner/repo/labels --jq '.[].name'

# Get repo stats
gh api repos/owner/repo --jq '{stars: .stargazers_count, forks: .forks_count}'

JSON Output

Most commands support --json for structured output with --jq filtering:

gh issue list --repo owner/repo --json number,title --jq '.[] | "\(.number): \(.title)"'
gh pr list --json number,title,state,mergeable --jq '.[] | select(.mergeable == "MERGEABLE")'

Templates

PR Review Summary

# Get PR overview for review
PR=55 REPO=owner/repo
echo "## PR #$PR Summary"
gh pr view $PR --repo $REPO --json title,body,author,additions,deletions,changedFiles \
  --jq '"**\(.title)** by @\(.author.login)\n\n\(.body)\n\n📊 +\(.additions) -\(.deletions) across \(.changedFiles) files"'
gh pr checks $PR --repo $REPO

Issue Triage

# Quick issue triage view
gh issue list --repo owner/repo --state open --json number,title,labels,createdAt \
  --jq '.[] | "[\(.number)] \(.title) - \([.labels[].name] | join(", ")) (\(.createdAt[:10]))"'

Notes

• Always specify --repo owner/repo when not in a git directory
• Use URLs directly: gh pr view https://github.com/owner/repo/pull/55
• Rate limits apply; use gh api --cache 1h for repeated queries