gh-cli-patterns

A reference guide for using the GitHub command-line tool, which lets developers manage repositories and pull requests from a terminal. It defines command formats, placeholders, data fields, and checks for common GitHub workflows.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when building skills or scripts that inspect repositories, manage pull requests, query review threads, detect default branches, or retrieve GitHub security alerts.
Why use it?
It reduces mistakes when writing commands for branches, pull requests, reviews, and code-scanning alerts.

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/dryvist/claude-code-plugins/gh-cli-patterns
Any agent
npx skills add dryvist/claude-code-plugins --skill gh-cli-patterns
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dryvist/claude-code-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 94 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,161 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 $0.00094 $0.04161
Opus 5 $0.00047 $0.02080
Sonnet 5 $0.00019 $0.00832
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00416

Measured yesterday against content hash f3392423bc27, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

gh-cli-patterns 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 yesterday.

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.

github-workflows/skills/gh-cli-patterns/SKILL.md · 385 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 385 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

gh CLI Canonical Patterns — github-workflows

Placeholder Convention

Two visually distinct notations — never mix them up:

Notation Meaning Example
$varName GraphQL variable name — keep as literal text in the query body $prNumber
<UPPER_NAME> Shell template — replace before running <PR_NUMBER>

Standard replacements:

<OWNER>          → $(gh repo view --json owner --jq '.owner.login')
<REPO>           → $(gh repo view --json name  --jq '.name')
<PR_NUMBER>      → $(gh pr view  --json number --jq '.number')  (integer)
<THREAD_ID>      → PRRT_* node ID from the fetch-threads query (string)
<DATABASE_ID>    → numeric comment ID from the fetch-threads query
<DEFAULT_BRANCH> → see Canonical Default-Branch Detection below

Canonical Default-Branch Detection

Repos in this org run one of two branch models. Detect which one before using any literal main in a PR base, sync target, or merge command:

gh repo view --json defaultBranchRef --jq '.defaultBranchRef.name'
# or, without gh: git remote show origin | grep 'HEAD branch'
<DEFAULT_BRANCH> Model What it means for skills in this plugin
main Trunk main is both the default branch and production. /merge-pr merges into it with its normal default (merge commit) or --squash/-s.
develop git-flow (see git-flow rule) develop is the default integration branch — feature PRs target it, /merge-pr's default (merge commit) or --squash both apply. main is production only: merge commits only, no direct pushes, every merge triggers release-please.

Never infer the model from the current local branch name — always read defaultBranchRef (or origin/HEAD) fresh, since it can differ per repo and per invocation.

A PR's own base branch (gh pr view --json baseRefName --jq '.baseRefName') can still be main on a git-flow repo — that is a promotion PR (developmain), not a feature PR, and it is merge-commit-only regardless of what this section's detection returns. See /promote-release.

Read the full file on GitHub · 385 lines

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. yesterday First seen · 385 lines · 94 tokens per session scan A f3392423bc27

Subscribe to this mod's changes

gh-cli-patterns is a skill published in the GitHub repository dryvist/claude-code-plugins (3 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 94 tokens to every session and 4,161 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. 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 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

rspec

This skill should be used when the user asks to "write specs", "create spec", "add RSpec tests", "fix failing spec", or mentions RSpec, describe blocks, it blocks, expect syntax, test doubles, or matchers. Should also be used when editing spec.rb files, working in spec/ directory, planning implementation phases that…

hoblin/claude-ruby-marketplace · 125 tokens

activerecord

This skill should be used when the user asks to "write a migration", "add a column", "add column to table", "create an index", "add a foreign key", "set up associations", "fix N+1 queries", "optimize queries", "add validations", "create callbacks", "use eager loading", or mentions ActiveRecord, belongsto, hasmany…

hoblin/claude-ruby-marketplace · 180 tokens

draper-decorators

This skill should be used when the user asks to "create a decorator", "write a decorator", "move logic into decorator", "clean logic out of the view", "isn't it decorator logic", "test a decorator", or mentions Draper, keeping views clean, or representation logic in decorators. Should also be used when editing…

hoblin/claude-ruby-marketplace · 131 tokens

mcp-server

This skill should be used when the user asks to "create an MCP server", "build MCP tools", "define MCP prompts", "register MCP resources", "implement Model Context Protocol", or mentions the mcp gem, MCP::Server, MCP::Tool, JSON-RPC transport, stdio transport, or streamable HTTP transport. Should also be used when…

hoblin/claude-ruby-marketplace · 98 tokens

ratatui-ruby

This skill should be used when the user asks to "create a TUI", "terminal interface", "terminal UI", "ratatui", "ratatui-ruby", "inline viewport", "full-screen terminal app", "terminal widgets", "tui.draw", "tui.pollevent", or mentions RatatuiRuby.run, managed loop, terminal rendering, Tea MVU, or building CLI…

hoblin/claude-ruby-marketplace · 119 tokens

dragonruby

This skill should be used when the user asks to "create a game", "make a game", "game development", "dragonruby", "drgtk", "game loop", "tick method", "sprite rendering", "game state", or mentions args.outputs, args.state, args.inputs, coordinate system, collision detection, animation frames, or scene management.…

hoblin/claude-ruby-marketplace · 100 tokens