gh-issues

GitHub Issues Watcher

Purpose

Process every open GitHub issue that is unassigned or assigned to the current user (@me), one after another, by delegating each to the /gh-issue skill. Stop on first hard failure so it can be inspected.

Driven from inside the Claude session rather than a polling shell script.

Args

• --limit N — process at most N issues this run (default: all).
• --label foo — only issues carrying label foo.
• --dry-run — list issues that would be processed; do not invoke /gh-issue.

Strip leading # if user passes #123 style.

Phase 1: Discover

Fetch open issues that are unassigned or assigned to @me, oldest first. GitHub search does not OR these cleanly, so run two queries and merge:

# Unassigned
gh issue list \
  --state open \
  --search "no:assignee" \
  --json number,title,labels,assignees,createdAt \
  --limit 200

# Assigned to me
gh issue list \
  --state open \
  --assignee "@me" \
  --json number,title,labels,assignees,createdAt \
  --limit 200

Merge:

• Deduplicate by number.
• Keep only issues whose assignees array is empty or contains the current user (gh api user -q .login).
• Drop issues assigned to anyone else (defensive).
• Skip tracker/epic issues — those whose body is a checklist of other issues (e.g. - [ ] #123 …). Process the child issues directly, not the parent.
• Apply --label filter if given.
• Apply --limit if given.
• Sort ascending by createdAt (FIFO).

Print the queue: #<num> <title> [assignee] per line, where [assignee] is unassigned or @me. If empty, exit cleanly.

Phase 2: Worktree Sanity

Before touching any issue:

git status --porcelain
git fetch origin main
git checkout main && git reset --hard origin/main

Abort if worktree dirty. Never auto-stash.

Phase 3: Process Loop

For each issue in the queue:

1. Re-check assignment state (someone else may have grabbed it):

   gh issue view <num> --json assignees -q '.assignees[].login'
   me=$(gh api user -q .login)
   

   • Empty output → unassigned, proceed.
   • Only $me listed → already mine, proceed (skip self-assign step).
   • Any other login present → skip this issue.