github-auth

GitHub Authentication Setup

This skill sets up authentication so the agent can work with GitHub repositories, PRs, issues, and CI. gh CLI is the default path — ask to install it if it's missing, don't reach for a personal access token instead. One gh auth login wires both API access and git credentials in a single step, no manual scope-picking, no long-lived secret to store on disk. The git-only PAT/SSH method further down exists only for the rare case where gh genuinely cannot be installed.

Detection Flow

When a user asks you to work with GitHub, run this check first:

# Check what's available
git --version
gh --version 2>/dev/null || echo "gh not installed"

# Check if already authenticated
gh auth status 2>/dev/null || echo "gh not authenticated"

Decision tree:

1. gh auth status shows authenticated → use gh for everything.
2. gh is installed but not authenticated → "Method 1: gh CLI" below.
3. gh is not installed → ask to install it first, then go to step 2. Only fall through to "Method 2: Git-only" if installation genuinely isn't possible (no package manager, no network access to fetch the binary, no permission to execute a downloaded binary at all).

Installing gh (no sudo needed on any platform)

# Linux: prebuilt binary, no root — extract and add to PATH
curl -fsSL https://github.com/cli/cli/releases/latest/download/gh_*_linux_amd64.tar.gz \
  | tar -xz -C ~/.local --strip-components=1   # lands at ~/.local/bin/gh
gh --version

# Linux with a package manager + sudo available
sudo apt install gh          # Debian/Ubuntu (may need the cli.github.com apt repo first)
sudo dnf install gh          # Fedora
sudo pacman -S github-cli    # Arch/CachyOS

# macOS
brew install gh

# Windows
winget install --id GitHub.cli

Verify with gh --version before moving on. If none of these are possible (fully offline, no package manager, no write access to extract a binary anywhere on PATH) — that's the actual trigger for "Method 2: Git-only" below, not just "gh happens to not be installed yet."