issue-management

Use this skill when creating, editing, inspecting, or removing relationships between GitHub issues.

These commands use the Issues 2.0 gh issue support added in GitHub CLI PR cli/cli#13057. Because this feature is new, first confirm the installed gh supports it:

gh issue create --help | grep -E -- '--parent|--blocked-by|--blocking'
gh issue edit --help | grep -E -- '--parent|--add-sub-issue|--add-blocked-by|--add-blocking'

If those flags are missing, update gh before trying to manage issue relationships. Do not invent older commands.

Issue reference format

Relationship flags accept issue numbers or issue URLs.

Use a number for an issue in the current repository:

gh issue edit 123 --parent 100

Use a full issue URL for a cross-repository relationship:

gh issue edit 123 --blocked-by https://github.com/remotion-dev/remotion/issues/456

Multiple related issues can be passed as a comma-separated list:

gh issue edit 123 --add-blocked-by 200,201

Parent and sub-issue relationships

A sub-issue has exactly one parent issue.

To create a new issue directly under a parent:

gh issue create \
  --title 'Docs: Add issue management skill' \
  --body-file /tmp/remotion-issue-body.md \
  --parent 100

To set or change the parent of an existing child issue:

gh issue edit <child-number> --parent <parent-number-or-url>

To remove the parent from a child issue:

gh issue edit <child-number> --remove-parent

To manage children from the parent issue:

gh issue edit <parent-number> --add-sub-issue <child-number-or-url>
gh issue edit <parent-number> --remove-sub-issue <child-number-or-url>

--add-sub-issue moves the child to the new parent if it already has another parent. Do not use --add-sub-issue while editing multiple parent issues in one command; one child cannot be added ambiguously to several parents.

Blocked-by and blocking relationships

Use blocked-by when the issue being edited is waiting on another issue.

# Issue 123 is blocked by issue 200.
gh issue edit 123 --add-blocked-by 200

# Remove that relationship.
gh issue edit 123 --remove-blocked-by 200

Use blocking when the issue being edited blocks another issue.

# Issue 123 is blocking issues 300 and 301.
gh issue edit 123 --add-blocking 300,301

# Remove one blocking relationship.
gh issue edit 123 --remove-blocking 300

Equivalent mental model:

gh issue edit A --add-blocking B

means the same relationship as:

gh issue edit B --add-blocked-by A

Choose the command based on which issue you are already editing.

When creating an issue, set relationships immediately:

gh issue create \
  --title 'Studio: Add timeline validation' \
  --body-file /tmp/remotion-issue-body.md \
  --blocked-by 200,201 \
  --blocking 300

Inspecting relationships

Human-readable view shows parent, sub-issues, blocked-by, and blocking metadata when present:

gh issue view <number>

Raw non-TTY output includes stable relationship lines:

gh issue view <number> | grep -E '^(parent|sub-issues|sub-issues-completed|blocked-by|blocking):'

For scripts, request the JSON fields explicitly:

gh issue view <number> \
  --json parent,subIssues,subIssuesSummary,blockedBy,blocking

subIssues, blockedBy, and blocking are connection objects with nodes and totalCount. subIssuesSummary contains completion counts.

Safe workflow

1. Create any new issue bodies with --body-file, not inline multiline shell strings.
2. Link the relationship using the appropriate gh issue create or gh issue edit flag.
3. Verify with gh issue view <number> or gh issue view <number> --json parent,subIssues,subIssuesSummary,blockedBy,blocking.
4. If editing a PR or parent issue body afterward, replace vague checklist text with concrete issue numbers.