GitLab Portfolio Skill

Aggregates cross-repo health signals from vault-registered projects into a single _PORTFOLIO.md dashboard — idempotent, opt-in, and _generator-marked.

Soul

gitlab-portfolio gives you a single-pane view of your entire project portfolio. It iterates all vault-registered repositories, dispatches parallel CLI calls to glab / gh, and writes a structured Markdown dashboard at <vault-dir>/01-projects/_PORTFOLIO.md. The result is a living status snapshot — updated on demand or at session-start — that never overwrites hand-edited files.

When to use

• You want a cross-repo issue/MR summary across many projects without opening each GitLab/GitHub UI.
• Session-start should surface a portfolio health banner (critical open issues, stale repos).
• A nightly routine should refresh the dashboard automatically via /portfolio.
• You need --dry-run preview before committing a refresh to the vault.

When NOT to use

• Bidirectional sync (writing issues back to GitLab/GitHub) — use gitlab-ops for write operations.
• Single-repo deep-dives — use /discovery or direct glab commands.
• Projects not registered in the vault (_overview.md or .vault.yaml) — unregistered repos are silently skipped.
• Replacing a hand-authored _PORTFOLIO.md — the _generator guard prevents overwriting human content.

Phase 1: Discovery

Implementation: scripts/lib/gitlab-portfolio/aggregator.mjs — discoverRepos().

Iterates <vault-dir>/01-projects/*/ subdirectories:

1. Primary — Read _overview.md YAML frontmatter. Look for gitlab: <namespace/repo> and/or github: <owner/repo>. Both keys may be present on a single repo.
2. Fallback — If _overview.md is absent or missing those keys, read .vault.yaml at the project root: spec.links.gitlab / spec.links.github.
3. Skip — Directories with neither source are silently skipped.

Output is an array of RepoDescriptor objects: { slug, gitlab, github }.

Phase 2: Aggregation

Implementation: scripts/lib/gitlab-portfolio/aggregator.mjs — aggregateAll(repos, config).

All repos are fetched in parallel via Promise.allSettled. Per-repo CLI dispatch:

# GitLab
glab issue list --repo <namespace/repo> --state opened --output json
glab mr list   --repo <namespace/repo> --state opened --output json

# GitHub
gh issue list --repo <owner/repo> --state open --json number,title,labels,createdAt,updatedAt,milestone
gh pr list    --repo <owner/repo> --state open --json number,title,labels,createdAt,updatedAt

Per-repo summary fields derived from JSON output:

Field	Derivation
openIssues / openMRs	array lengths
critical	issues where any label matches critical-labels (case-insensitive)
stale	issues where updatedAt older than stale-days days
nextMilestone	earliest non-null milestone.title across open issues
lastActivity	max updatedAt across all issues + MRs
topIssues	first 3 open issues sorted by createdAt ascending (oldest open first)

On CLI failure per repo: behaviour is controlled by mode (see Error Handling).

Phase 3: Output

Implementation: scripts/lib/gitlab-portfolio/markdown-writer.mjs — renderDashboard(summaries, config).

Output path: <vault-dir>/01-projects/_PORTFOLIO.md. Frontmatter keys: _generator: session-orchestrator-gitlab-portfolio@1, created (ISO8601, set once), updated (ISO8601, refreshed each write), repos (count). Atomic write: content built in memory, committed via a single writeFileSync.

Phase 4: Idempotency

parseFrontmatter and emitAction imported from scripts/lib/vault-mirror/utils.mjs. Rules:

1. No file → created.
2. File exists, _generator absent or differs → skipped-handwritten (never overwrite human content).
3. File exists, generator matches, updated ≤ fresh data → updated.
4. File exists, generator matches, updated > fresh data → skipped-noop.

Stdout action shape: {"action":"updated","path":"01-projects/_PORTFOLIO.md","repos":16,"critical":3}

Config

Opt-in via the gitlab-portfolio: block in Session Config (CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md):

gitlab-portfolio:
  enabled: true
  mode: warn          # warn | strict | off
  stale-days: 30
  critical-labels: ["priority::critical", "priority::high"]

Field	Default	Meaning
enabled	false	Master switch.
mode	warn	warn / strict / off — failure handling; off ≡ disabled.
stale-days	30	Issues older than N days are flagged stale.
critical-labels	["priority::critical","priority::high"]	Label substrings that classify an issue as critical (case-insensitive).

Security

--vault-dir validation (SEC, GH #44). The --vault-dir CLI argument and vault-integration.vault-dir Session Config value are validated against the user's home directory via validatePathInsideProject (scripts/lib/path-utils.mjs). Both phases apply:

• Lexical: paths containing .. traversal that resolve outside os.homedir() are rejected (exit 2).
• Symlink: paths whose real-path (after symlink resolution) escapes os.homedir() are rejected (exit 2).

Configure vault-integration.vault-dir only with user-controlled paths under ~. The same guard applies to the implicit Phase 2.7 portfolio snapshot at session-start. Reference: CWE-22 path traversal · .claude/rules/security.md SEC-014 adjacent guidance.

Note: vault-dir must be a CHILD of ~ (the home directory), not ~ itself. The guard uses strict isPathInside semantics, which require a proper descendant path.

CLI

node scripts/lib/gitlab-portfolio/aggregator.mjs \
  --vault-dir ~/Projects/vault \
  [--dry-run]

Flag	Required	Description
--vault-dir	yes	Absolute path to Meta-Vault root. Must exist.
--dry-run	no	Run discovery + aggregation; print diff to stdout; do not write the dashboard.

Exit codes: 0 success · 1 bad args/config · 2 vault-dir not found or write failed · 3 repo fetch failures in strict mode.

Hook

When gitlab-portfolio.enabled: true and vault-integration.enabled: true, session-start Phase 2 invokes the aggregator in parallel with ecosystem-health. The hook always runs in warn mode — session-start must not block on non-fatal failures. On critical issues found, a banner is emitted:

🔴 Portfolio: 3 critical issues across 2 repos — run /portfolio for details

Output format

---
_generator: session-orchestrator-gitlab-portfolio@1
created: 2026-05-16T08:00:00Z
updated: 2026-05-16T08:00:00Z
repos: 2
---

# Portfolio Dashboard

> Generated: 2026-05-16 08:00 UTC · 2 repos · 1 critical · 0 stale

## Summary

| Repo | Open Issues | Open MRs | Critical | Stale | Last Activity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| session-orchestrator | 9 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2026-05-16 |
| my-saas-app          | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2026-05-15 |

## session-orchestrator

**gitlab:** `kanevry/session-orchestrator` · Open: 9 issues / 2 MRs · Critical: 1 · Next milestone: v3.7

| # | Title | Labels | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|
| #41 | gitlab-portfolio skill | enhancement | 2026-05-16 |
| #42 | session-end echo-stub | bug | 2026-05-14 |
| #35 | superpowers adoption | enhancement | 2026-05-10 |

## my-saas-app

**github:** `owner/my-saas-app` · Open: 4 issues / 1 PR · Critical: 0

Error handling

Behaviour is governed by mode. warn: emit warning to stderr, continue with partial data; repo rows show (fetch failed). strict: any repo fetch failure exits 2 after the scan. off: the CLI exits 0 with one line before resolving the vault-dir or scanning any repo, and writes nothing (#1619).

--vault-dir not found and write errors always exit 2 regardless of mode. _PORTFOLIO.md with no _generator key always results in skipped-handwritten (all modes). No repos discovered: exit 0 in every mode (no file written).

Anti-Patterns

• Sequential glab calls — always use Promise.allSettled; sequential calls time out on large portfolios.
• Writing without idempotency check — always inspect _generator before overwriting.
• Hardcoding label strings — read critical-labels from config.
• Blocking session-start on fetch failures — hook always runs in warn mode.
• Overwriting created on refresh — created is set once; only updated changes.

Critical Rules

• _generator: session-orchestrator-gitlab-portfolio@1 MUST appear in every file written by this skill.
• Output path is always <vault-dir>/01-projects/_PORTFOLIO.md. No other path is valid.
• Promise.allSettled is mandatory — one failing repo must never abort the entire run.
• Atomic write: build full content in memory, then a single writeFileSync.
• Implementation files: scripts/lib/gitlab-portfolio/aggregator.mjs (discovery + aggregation) · scripts/lib/gitlab-portfolio/markdown-writer.mjs (rendering + idempotency) · shared helpers from scripts/lib/vault-mirror/utils.mjs.