SKILL: gh-issues

Purpose

Create, read, update, and link GitHub Issues as first-class story artifacts. Agents use this skill to manage issue lifecycle — from PO story creation through QA closure — without human intervention.

Inputs

Field	Source	Example
title	story frontmatter	"User can reset password"
body_file	story file path	docs/stories/auth-reset-0001.md
labels	story frontmatter + phase	"type:feature,priority:high,phase:discover"
milestone	project.config.yaml	"v1.0"
assignee	orchestrator context	"@me"
issue_number	previously created issue	42

Outputs

Field	Description
issue_number	integer, use for all subsequent operations
issue_url	full GitHub URL for logging
issue_node_id	GraphQL node ID, needed for Projects v2 card add

Create an Issue

# Capture issue number and URL
RESULT=$(gh issue create \
  --title "{title}" \
  --body-file "{body_file}" \
  --label "{labels}" \
  --milestone "{milestone}" \
  --json number,url,id)

ISSUE_NUMBER=$(echo "$RESULT" | python3 -c "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin); print(d['number'])")
ISSUE_URL=$(echo "$RESULT"    | python3 -c "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin); print(d['url'])")
ISSUE_NODE=$(echo "$RESULT"   | python3 -c "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin); print(d['id'])")

View an Issue

gh issue view {issue_number} --json number,title,state,labels,body

Edit Labels and Assignee

# Add label, remove old phase label
gh issue edit {issue_number} \
  --add-label "phase:architect" \
  --remove-label "phase:discover"

# Assign to current actor
gh issue edit {issue_number} --add-assignee "@me"

Add a Comment

gh issue comment {issue_number} \
  --body "{message}"

Comment conventions by role:

Event	Template
Phase start	"Phase {N} {PHASE_NAME}: starting. Artifact target: {path}"
Phase complete	"Phase {N} {PHASE_NAME}: complete. Artifacts: {path}"
TDD red	"RED: Failing test at {test_path} — {failure_message}"
TDD green	"GREEN: {test_count} tests passing."
Blocked	"BLOCKED: {agent} failed 3x on {task}. Human intervention required."

Close an Issue

# Close with final validation summary
gh issue close {issue_number} \
  --comment "All acceptance criteria passing. Validation: {summary}"

List Issues

# All open issues for current phase
gh issue list --label "phase:implement" --state open --json number,title,labels

# Blocked issues
gh issue list --label "blocked" --state open

Link Issues (parent / blocks)

GitHub Issues has no native parent field — use body references and labels:

# In the child issue body, add:
# "Closes #{parent_number}" → auto-closes parent when child closes
# "Part of #{epic_issue_number}"

# For blocking relationships, comment on the blocked issue:
gh issue comment {blocked_number} \
  --body "Blocked by #{blocker_number} — {reason}"
gh issue edit {blocked_number} --add-label "blocked"

Failure Modes

Condition	Action
gh not authenticated	Stop. Output: gh auth login required. Do not retry.
Issue already exists with same title	Check with gh issue list --search "{title}" --state all. Skip create if found; return existing number.
Label does not exist	Create label first via gh label create. See gh-labels-milestones skill.
Milestone not found	Create milestone first: gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/milestones -f title="{name}".
Rate limit hit	Wait 60 seconds, retry once. If second attempt fails, stop and log.

Logging

Always log after every gh issue mutation:

[gh-issues] CREATE  #42  "User can reset password"  labels=[type:feature,priority:high]
[gh-issues] COMMENT #42  phase:implement start
[gh-issues] CLOSE   #42  all criteria passing

Format: [gh-issues] {ACTION} #{number} {description}