tamirs-superpowers / rules

---
description: "GitHub transport policy — gh is an optional feature dependency; degrade explicitly when it is absent. Canonical: rules/dev/gh-cli-preference.md"
alwaysApply: false
globs: ["skills/dev-workflow/**/*", "scripts/**/*", ".github/**/*", "hooks/**/*"]
---

<!-- GENERATED FILE — DO NOT EDIT.
     Source:    rules/dev/gh-cli-preference.md (frontmatter + summary: platforms/cursor/rules.map.json)
     Generator: scripts/build-cursor-rules.sh
     Regenerate: make cursor-rules -->

# GitHub transport policy

Canonical rule: `rules/dev/gh-cli-preference.md`.

`gh` is an **optional feature dependency**, not a requirement. Objectives, worktrees, handoffs, and Tier 0–2 validation must all work with no GitHub account, no network, and no `gh` installed.

When a script or skill touches GitHub, detect `gh` and degrade explicitly — skip the optional step and say so, fall back to plain git where git can do the job, or stop with a clear message naming the missing dependency. Never silently pretend a GitHub step succeeded.

**The one exception:** when a GitHub action *is* the request ("open a PR", "merge #12"), a missing `gh` is a hard, reportable failure — do not invent a local substitute.

Never resolve the default branch through `gh`; use `git symbolic-ref --quiet --short refs/remotes/origin/HEAD` with a `main` fallback.

## In dev context, use `gh` — not GitHub MCP

Contributor tooling, CI scripts, hooks, and skill scripts use the `gh` CLI. GitHub MCP tools are runtime-only: they authenticate through a session credential and make dev scripts brittle. Derive tokens with `gh auth token`; never prompt for a pasted one.