Linear Ready

Find Linear issues that are ready for an AI agent to work on — meaning they match your filters and have no active (unresolved) blockers.

This is the Linear equivalent of bd ready in beads workflows.

Prerequisites

1. linear-cli must be installed and authenticated:

   brew install schpet/tap/linear   # or: npm install -g @schpet/linear-cli
   linear auth login
   

2. jq must be available on PATH.

How It Works

The script runs a single GraphQL query via linear api that fetches candidate issues along with their blocking relations and blocker states. It then filters client-side with jq:

• An issue is ready if it has no blockedBy relations pointing to incomplete issues (i.e. all blockers are in a completed, canceled, or duplicate state).
• An issue is blocked if any of its blockers are still active.

Label Convention

Issues suitable for AI agent work should be tagged with the "AI" label in Linear. This is the default filter; override with --label.

Usage

Run the script from this skill's directory:

.agents/skills/linear-ready/scripts/linear-ready [OPTIONS]

Options

Flag	Description	Default
--team <key>	Filter by team key (e.g. "ENG")	all teams
--label <name>	Label to filter for	AI
--project <name>	Filter by project name
--assignee <name>	Filter by assignee display name
--unassigned	Show only unassigned issues
--priority <1-4>	Filter by priority (1=Urgent..4=Low)
--limit <n>	Max results	50
--state <types>	Comma-separated state types to include	backlog,unstarted
--include-blocked	Include blocked issues in output
--json	JSON output for agent consumption

Examples

# Find all ready AI issues
linear-ready

# Find ready issues for a specific team
linear-ready --team ENG

# Find ready issues in a specific project
linear-ready --team ENG --project "Auth Rewrite"

# Find unassigned ready issues (good for picking up new work)
linear-ready --unassigned

# JSON output for programmatic use
linear-ready --json

# Include blocked issues to see the full picture
linear-ready --include-blocked

# Use a different label instead of "AI"
linear-ready --label "agent-ready"

Agent Workflow

When starting a session or looking for work:

1. Find ready work:

   linear-ready --team ENG --json
   

2. Pick an issue — choose the highest priority unblocked issue from the output.

3. Read the issue description for full context:

   linear issue view ENG-42 --json
   

4. Start work — update the issue state to "In Progress":

   linear issue update ENG-42 -s started
   

   Or use linear issue start ENG-42 which also creates a git branch.

5. Implement the task following the issue's acceptance criteria.

6. Complete — update the issue state when done:

   linear issue update ENG-42 -s completed
   

Output Formats

Pretty (default)

Ready issues (label: AI):

  ENG-42  [High]    Add display_name to user profile
          State: Todo | Project: User Features | Unassigned

  ENG-45  [Normal]  Fix auth token refresh race condition
          State: Todo | Assigned: alice

Blocked: 2 issue(s) hidden (use --include-blocked to show)

JSON (--json)

{
  "ready": [
    {
      "identifier": "ENG-42",
      "title": "Add display_name to user profile",
      "priority": 2,
      "priorityLabel": "High",
      "url": "https://linear.app/...",
      "state": { "name": "Todo", "type": "unstarted" },
      "assignee": null,
      "project": { "name": "User Features" },
      "activeBlockers": []
    }
  ],
  "blockedCount": 2
}

With --include-blocked --json, the full blocked array is included with each issue's activeBlockers list showing what's blocking it.