Agent skill

smith-gh-cli

GitHub CLI gotchas and best practices. Use when executing gh commands. Covers token efficiency, pagination limits, and common pitfalls.

View SKILL.md on GitHub Repository
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Install this agent skill to your Project

npx add-skill https://github.com/tianjianjiang/smith/tree/main/smith-gh-cli

SKILL.md

GitHub CLI Best Practices

  • Load if: Using GitHub CLI commands
  • Prerequisites: @smith-git/SKILL.md, @smith-gh-pr/SKILL.md

CRITICAL: Avoid GitHub MCP (Primacy Zone)

  • GitHub MCP tools - hard to control pagination (25k token truncation), less complete than CLI, requires personal token

Use instead: gh pr-review extension, gh api, or GraphQL queries

Token Efficiency

Safe perPage limits:

  • list_pull_requests: perPage 20-30
  • get_review_comments: perPage 10 (bot reviews are massive)
  • get_files: perPage 30
  • search_repositories: minimal_output: true

Common Pitfalls

  • ALWAYS assign yourself: --assignee @me
  • Draft PRs: Use --draft with #WIP in title for work-in-progress
  • Ensure gh installed: If gh not found, prompt user/agent to install

Issue Linking

In PR descriptions:

  • Closes #123 - Auto-closes on merge
  • Fixes #123 - Same as Closes
  • Relates to #123 - Links without closing
  • @smith-gh-pr/SKILL.md - PR workflows, review comment fetching
  • @smith-git/SKILL.md - Git operations

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