A guide to using the GitHub command-line tool, called gh, for working with GitHub repositories. GitHub is a service where teams store code and manage issues, pull requests, and automated checks.

Checking pull requests, reviews, CI runs and logs, creating or commenting on issues, querying repository information, and creating or merging pull requests. It is for GitHub tasks rather than general local Git work.

It avoids switching between screens to inspect repository work and gives a repeatable way to check whether changes are reviewed and whether automated tests passed. It also covers common repository-management actions.

github — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by understudy-ai/understudy

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.

Any agent

npx skills add understudy-ai/understudy --skill github

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/understudy-ai/understudy

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/understudy-ai/understudy/github/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/understudy-ai/understudy/github)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/understudy-ai/understudy/github"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/understudy-ai/understudy/github/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/understudy-ai/understudy/github"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/understudy-ai/understudy/github.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 101 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,138 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin 94% copy Near-identical to another mod 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00101	$0.01138
Opus 5.5	$0.00040	$0.00455
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00020	$0.00228
Haiku 4.5	$0.00010	$0.00114

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 0a1be0b90ebe, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, 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 1mo 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.

Origin

This is a copy

94% identical to github — 2 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/github/SKILL.md · 164 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 164 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

GitHub Skill

Use the gh CLI to interact with GitHub repositories, issues, PRs, and CI.

When to Use

✅ USE this skill when:

Checking PR status, reviews, or merge readiness
Viewing CI/workflow run status and logs
Creating, closing, or commenting on issues
Creating or merging pull requests
Querying GitHub API for repository data
Listing repos, releases, or collaborators

When NOT to Use

❌ DON'T use this skill when:

Local git operations (commit, push, pull, branch) → use git directly
Non-GitHub repos (GitLab, Bitbucket, self-hosted) → different CLIs
Cloning repositories → use git clone
Reviewing actual code changes → use coding-agent skill
Complex multi-file diffs → use coding-agent or read files directly

Setup

# Authenticate (one-time)
gh auth login

# Verify
gh auth status

Common Commands

Pull Requests

# List PRs
gh pr list --repo owner/repo

# Check CI status
gh pr checks 55 --repo owner/repo

# View PR details
gh pr view 55 --repo owner/repo

# Create PR
gh pr create --title "feat: add feature" --body "Description"

# Merge PR
gh pr merge 55 --squash --repo owner/repo

Issues

# List issues
gh issue list --repo owner/repo --state open

# Create issue
gh issue create --title "Bug: something broken" --body "Details..."

# Close issue
gh issue close 42 --repo owner/repo

CI/Workflow Runs

# List recent runs
gh run list --repo owner/repo --limit 10

# View specific run
gh run view <run-id> --repo owner/repo

# View failed step logs only
gh run view <run-id> --repo owner/repo --log-failed

# Re-run failed jobs
gh run rerun <run-id> --failed --repo owner/repo

API Queries

# Get PR with specific fields
gh api repos/owner/repo/pulls/55 --jq '.title, .state, .user.login'

# List all labels
gh api repos/owner/repo/labels --jq '.[].name'

# Get repo stats
gh api repos/owner/repo --jq '{stars: .stargazers_count, forks: .forks_count}'

JSON Output

Read the full file on GitHub · 164 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.

1mo ago First seen · 164 lines · 101 tokens per session scan A 0a1be0b90ebe

Subscribe to this mod's changes

github is a skill published in the GitHub repository understudy-ai/understudy (463 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 101 tokens to every session and 1,138 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 94% identical to github, differing in 2 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Code review Git and workflow agents ai assistant gui-agents own-your-data personal

github