github

A guide to the GitHub REST API, which lets software interact with repositories, branches, pull requests, reviews, and automated checks. It focuses on using GitHub’s Octokit libraries.

In plain words
What is it for?
Opening pull requests, requesting reviewers, reading or updating Git data, and integrating GitHub actions into development tools.
Why use it?
It helps automate repository work without manually using the GitHub website and explains permissions, errors, and request limits.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ashish7802/awesome-api-skills/github
Any agent
npx skills add ashish7802/awesome-api-skills --skill github
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ashish7802/awesome-api-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 0 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 469 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00000 $0.00469
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00234
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00094
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00047

Measured 2d ago against content hash 28dfa665f80d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

github scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 5 executable files (examples/basic.ts, examples/example.py, examples/example.ts, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/github/SKILL.md · 61 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 61 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

GitHub REST API API Skill

Overview

The GitHub REST API (v3) allows deep integration with Git data, pull requests, and GitHub Actions. This skill emphasizes the Octokit SDK.

Installation

npm install octokit
pip install PyGithub

Authentication

Use Personal Access Tokens (Classic or Fine-grained) passed as Bearer tokens. Fine-grained PATs are highly recommended for least-privilege access.

Core Concepts

  • Octokit: The official SDK.
  • Refs: Git references (branches/tags).
  • Checks: Status reports for commits (used by CI).

Common Workflows

  1. Authenticate Octokit.
  2. Call octokit.rest.pulls.create to open a PR.
  3. Request reviewers via octokit.rest.pulls.requestReviewers.

Error Handling

Handle HttpError. Status 404 often indicates missing permissions (due to token scope) rather than a truly missing resource.

Security

Never store PATs in source code. Use GitHub Apps for server-to-server integrations rather than service accounts.

Rate Limits

Authenticated requests are limited to 5,000 per hour. Search API is limited to 30 requests per minute.

Best Practices

Use GraphQL for deeply nested data retrieval to save REST calls. Use the If-None-Match header to utilize conditional requests (saves rate limits).

Troubleshooting

If Actions fail to trigger via API, ensure your token has the workflow scope.

References

Why use this skill

Use this when your agent works with github — structured patterns beat pasted docs and prevent common hallucinations.

AI pitfalls

  • Referencing CLI flags or config keys that do not exist
  • Using outdated major versions of tools
  • Skipping lockfile or version pinning in examples

Production checklist

  • Secrets in environment variables, not source code
  • Error handling and logging in place
  • Rate limits and timeouts configured
  • No graph relationships yet — see the knowledge graph in the docs site.

Read the full file on GitHub · 61 lines

Files

What ships with it

8 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 61 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 28dfa665f80d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

github is a skill published in the GitHub repository ashish7802/awesome-api-skills (13 stars, last pushed 14d ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 469 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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