Agent-Skills.md

Agent Skills: GitHub CLI Best Practices

GitHub CLI gotchas and best practices. Use when executing gh commands. Covers token efficiency, pagination limits, and common pitfalls.

UncategorizedID: tianjianjiang/smith/smith-gh-cli

Repository

tianjianjiang/smith
tianjianjiang

Install this agent skill to your local

pnpm dlx add-skill https://github.com/tianjianjiang/smith/tree/HEAD/smith-gh-cli

Skill Files

Browse the full folder contents for smith-gh-cli.

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smith-gh-cli/SKILL.md

Skill Metadata

Name
smith-gh-cli
Description
GitHub CLI gotchas and best practices. Use when executing gh commands. Covers token efficiency, pagination limits, and common pitfalls.

GitHub CLI Best Practices

<metadata>
  • Load if: Using GitHub CLI commands
  • Prerequisites: @smith-git/SKILL.md, @smith-gh-pr/SKILL.md
</metadata>

CRITICAL: Avoid GitHub MCP (Primacy Zone)

<forbidden>
  • GitHub MCP tools - hard to control pagination (25k token truncation), less complete than CLI, requires personal token
</forbidden>

Use instead: gh pr-review extension, gh api, or GraphQL queries

Token Efficiency

<required>

Safe perPage limits:

  • list_pull_requests: perPage 20-30
  • get_review_comments: perPage 10 (bot reviews are massive)
  • get_files: perPage 30
  • search_repositories: minimal_output: true
</required>

Common Pitfalls

<required>
  • ALWAYS assign yourself: --assignee @me
  • Draft PRs: Use --draft with #WIP in title for work-in-progress
  • Ensure gh installed: If gh not found, prompt user/agent to install
</required>

Issue Linking

In PR descriptions:

  • Closes #123 - Auto-closes on merge
  • Fixes #123 - Same as Closes
  • Relates to #123 - Links without closing
<related>
  • @smith-gh-pr/SKILL.md - PR workflows, review comment fetching
  • @smith-git/SKILL.md - Git operations
</related>