glab-workitems

glab work-items

Create, list, and delete GitLab work items — GitLab's unified work tracking model for tasks, OKRs, key results, epics, incidents, test cases, and related planning objects.

Assign an iteration

Use the numeric iteration ID with --iteration on create or update:

glab work-items create --type issue --title "Add feature" --iteration 123
glab work-items update 42 --iteration 123

Omitting the flag leaves the iteration unset on create and unchanged on update. Verify the work item's scope and the intended iteration before the write; do not substitute an iteration title for the ID.

⚠️ Experimental Feature

glab work-items is still marked EXPERIMENTAL upstream:

• command shape may still change
• availability can differ by GitLab version / feature flags
• some work item types are only meaningful at group scope
• use glab issue for stable day-to-day issue workflows

See: https://docs.gitlab.com/policy/development_stages_support/

Quick start

# List work items in the current project
glab work-items list

# Create a task in the current project
glab work-items create --type task --title "Follow up on flaky pipeline"

# Create or update with a multi-line description from a file
glab work-items create --type task --title "Follow up" --description-file description.md
glab work-items update 42 --description-file description.md

# Attach a project-scoped file reference
glab work-items create --type task --title "Follow up" --attach ./evidence.png
glab work-items update 42 --attach ./latest.png

# Create a group-scoped epic
glab work-items create --type epic --group my-group --title "Platform rewrite"

Scope model

glab work-items uses repository context by default, then lets you override scope explicitly:

• Current repo context → project work items in the checked-out repository
• --repo owner/project → a different project
• --group my-group → group/subgroup work items

This matters because some work item types are commonly project-scoped (task, issue, incident) while others often live at group scope (epic, objective, key_result).