github-issues

Guidelines for splitting planned software work into GitHub issues, which track tasks and requirements for a project.

In plain words
What is it for?
Writing user stories, sizing tasks, defining acceptance criteria, recording dependencies, and organizing work into milestones.
Why use it?
They help teams avoid issues that are too vague, too large, or impossible to verify in one pull request.

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/shwilliamson/automatasaurus/github-issues
Any agent
npx skills add shwilliamson/automatasaurus --skill github-issues
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/shwilliamson/automatasaurus

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 29 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,035 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 $0.00029 $0.01035
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.00517
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00207
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00103

Measured 2d ago against content hash 95ccb9f3e821, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

github-issues 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.

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.

template/skills/github-issues/SKILL.md · 159 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 159 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

GitHub Issue Creation Skill

Guidelines for creating well-structured GitHub issues that enable efficient autonomous development.

Core Principles

  1. One PR Per Issue - Each issue completable in a single pull request
  2. Vertical Slices - Prefer end-to-end functionality over horizontal layers
  3. Testable Criteria - Every issue must have objectively verifiable acceptance criteria

Issue Sizing

Right-Sized

  • Completable in 1-4 hours
  • Single, clear objective
  • 3-7 acceptance criteria

Too Large (Split It)

  • More than 7 acceptance criteria
  • Touches more than 3-4 files significantly
  • Requires "and" to describe
  • Split by: user action, data entity, happy path vs error handling

Too Small (Combine It)

  • Less than 15 minutes of work
  • No meaningful acceptance criteria

Issue Template

**[Product Owner]**

## User Story
As a [user type],
I want [action],
So that [benefit].

## Acceptance Criteria
- [ ] Primary happy path works
- [ ] Key error case handled
- [ ] Edge case covered

## Dependencies
Depends on #X (reason)
-- OR --
None - can be worked independently

## Out of Scope
- Explicitly list what this does NOT cover

Do NOT Include

  • Implementation details (let Developer decide)
  • Specific file names or code structure
  • Time estimates

Dependency Management

## Dependencies
Depends on #12 (database schema must exist)
Depends on #15 (auth middleware required)

An issue is "ready" when all dependencies are closed.

Milestone Organization

  • 3-10 issues per milestone - Small enough to feel achievable
  • Ordered by value - Earlier milestones = higher value/lower risk
  • Clear definition of done - What can users do when complete?

Creating Milestones

gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/milestones \
  -f title="v1.0 - Basic Cart" \
  -f description="Users can add items to cart and modify quantities"

gh issue edit {number} --milestone "v1.0 - Basic Cart"

Issue Commands

Sandbox Compatibility (Important)

Read the full file on GitHub · 159 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. 2d ago First seen · 159 lines · 29 tokens per session scan A 95ccb9f3e821

Subscribe to this mod's changes

github-issues is a skill published in the GitHub repository shwilliamson/automatasaurus (5 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 29 tokens to every session and 1,035 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.

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