GitHub CLI

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

DSH runtime notes

• gh is not bundled with DSH. Before running anything, confirm it exists: pwsh: Get-Command gh -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue. If it is missing, stop and tell the user the exact install command instead of inventing output:
  • Windows: winget install --id GitHub.cli
  • macOS: brew install gh
  • Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install gh
• Auth is per-machine: gh auth status first. If it reports "not logged in", ask the user to run gh auth login themselves (it is interactive) — do not attempt to script the login.
• DSH runs commands through pwsh. The snippets below are POSIX-style; on Windows use pwsh -Command with the same flags, and prefer --repo owner/repo over relying on cwd.
• For bulk or cross-repo work, generate a script that calls gh api rather than looping the model over many gh calls.
• When a request needs real browser interaction (web UI flows, screenshots, clicking), use the browser-harness skill instead — gh cannot drive the web UI.

Setup

# Authenticate (one-time)
gh auth login

# Verify
gh auth status

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
• Quote --jq expressions in pwsh with single quotes so the shell does not expand $ or \
• If a command fails, report the exact gh stderr text; do not paraphrase a plausible failure