skills/skills/engineering/setup-matt-pocock-skills/issue-tracker-github.md
Matt Pocock 6f9e9956fd wayfinder: claim by assigning the ticket, not a label
A session now claims a ticket by assigning it to the dev driving the
map, rather than setting a `wayfinder:claimed` label. The assignee is
the claim; an open, unassigned ticket is unclaimed. Reads more naturally
in the tracker's own UI and frees the label vocabulary to
`wayfinder:<type>` alone.

Updates the GitHub and GitLab tracker-operations docs to the assignee
mechanism (`--add-assignee @me` / `--assignee @me`). The local-markdown
tracker keeps its `Status: claimed` line — a file store has no assignee.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-03 11:34:42 +01:00

3.7 KiB

Issue tracker: GitHub

Issues and PRDs for this repo live as GitHub issues. Use the gh CLI for all operations.

Conventions

  • Create an issue: gh issue create --title "..." --body "...". Use a heredoc for multi-line bodies.
  • Read an issue: gh issue view <number> --comments, filtering comments by jq and also fetching labels.
  • List issues: gh issue list --state open --json number,title,body,labels,comments --jq '[.[] | {number, title, body, labels: [.labels[].name], comments: [.comments[].body]}]' with appropriate --label and --state filters.
  • Comment on an issue: gh issue comment <number> --body "..."
  • Apply / remove labels: gh issue edit <number> --add-label "..." / --remove-label "..."
  • Close: gh issue close <number> --comment "..."

Infer the repo from git remote -vgh does this automatically when run inside a clone.

Pull requests as a triage surface

PRs as a request surface: no. (Set to yes if this repo treats external PRs as feature requests; /triage reads this flag.)

When set to yes, PRs run through the same labels and states as issues, using the gh pr equivalents:

  • Read a PR: gh pr view <number> --comments and gh pr diff <number> for the diff.
  • List external PRs for triage: gh pr list --state open --json number,title,body,labels,author,authorAssociation,comments then keep only authorAssociation of CONTRIBUTOR, FIRST_TIME_CONTRIBUTOR, or NONE (drop OWNER/MEMBER/COLLABORATOR).
  • Comment / label / close: gh pr comment, gh pr edit --add-label/--remove-label, gh pr close.

GitHub shares one number space across issues and PRs, so a bare #42 may be either — resolve with gh pr view 42 and fall back to gh issue view 42.

When a skill says "publish to the issue tracker"

Create a GitHub issue.

When a skill says "fetch the relevant ticket"

Run gh issue view <number> --comments.

Wayfinding operations

Used by /wayfinder. The map is a single issue with child issues as tickets.

  • Map: a single issue labelled wayfinder:map, holding the Notes / Decisions-so-far / Fog body. gh issue create --label wayfinder:map.
  • Child ticket: an issue linked to the map as a GitHub sub-issue (gh api on the sub-issues endpoint). Where sub-issues aren't enabled, add the child to a task list in the map body and put Part of #<map> at the top of the child body. Labels: wayfinder:<type> (research/prototype/grilling/task). Once claimed, the ticket is assigned to the driving dev.
  • Blocking: GitHub's native issue dependencies — the canonical, UI-visible representation. Add an edge with gh api --method POST repos/<owner>/<repo>/issues/<child>/dependencies/blocked_by -F issue_id=<blocker-db-id>, where <blocker-db-id> is the blocker's numeric database id (gh api repos/<owner>/<repo>/issues/<n> --jq .id, not the #number or node_id). GitHub reports issue_dependencies_summary.blocked_by (open blockers only — the live gate). Where dependencies aren't available, fall back to a Blocked by: #<n>, #<n> line at the top of the child body. A ticket is unblocked when every blocker is closed.
  • Frontier query: list the map's open children (gh issue list --state open, scoped to the map's sub-issues / task list), drop any with an open blocker (issue_dependencies_summary.blocked_by > 0, or an open issue in the Blocked by line) or an assignee; first in map order wins.
  • Claim: gh issue edit <n> --add-assignee @me — the session's first write.
  • Resolve: gh issue comment <n> --body "<answer>", then gh issue close <n>, then append a context pointer (gist + link) to the map's Decisions-so-far.