GitHub Skill

Use this skill to read and edit GitHub repositories without creating a VM or cloning the repository.

Read the repo's instructions FIRST (mandatory)

Before you read, write, or patch ANY file in a repository — on your first action against that repo, and again whenever you switch repos or branches — you MUST call repoInstructions for that owner/repo/ref and follow what it returns.

repoInstructions fetches the project's agent instruction files in one call: AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, GEMINI.md, .github/copilot-instructions.md, .cursorrules, and .windsurfrules. These hold the repo's conventions, runbooks, and "how we do X here" knowledge. Skipping this is the most common cause of wrong or low-quality changes — do not guess what you could have read.

If it returns NO_INSTRUCTION_FILES_FOUND, proceed but infer conventions from the codebase.

Pass the configured GitHub token secret as githubToken through secretMapping. Usually this should be:

{ "githubToken": "GITHUB_TOKEN" }

The token must have access to the repository and must allow requests to api.github.com.

Tools

• repoInstructions: fetches the repo's agent instruction files (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, GEMINI.md, .github/copilot-instructions.md, .cursorrules, .windsurfrules) in one call. Call this FIRST for any repo, before reading or editing files (see "Read the repo's instructions FIRST" above).
• readGithubFile: reads a file from a branch or ref.
• writeGithubFile: commits a full file replacement using the Git Data API.
• patchGithubFile: reads a file, performs an exact string replacement, and commits the result using the Git Data API.
• createGithubIssue: creates a GitHub issue.
• addGithubIssueComment: adds a comment to an issue or pull request.
• createGithubPullRequest: creates a pull request.
• createGithubRepository: creates and automatically initializes a new repository (with a default main branch and README.md).
• patchTextForTest: pure helper used for testing patch semantics.

Editing Rules

Prefer patchGithubFile for small changes. It follows OpenCode-style safe editing semantics:

• searchText must exactly match existing file content.
• If replaceAll is false, searchText must occur exactly once.
• If searchText occurs zero times, the tool returns SEARCH_TEXT_NOT_FOUND.
• If searchText occurs multiple times and replaceAll is false, the tool returns SEARCH_TEXT_NOT_UNIQUE.
• Set replaceAll to true only when every occurrence should change.

Use writeGithubFile only when creating or replacing a whole file is clearer than a precise patch.

Use createGithubIssue, addGithubIssueComment, and createGithubPullRequest for project-management tasks instead of shelling out to curl. This avoids VM state issues and command-length limits for long issue/comment bodies.

Use createGithubRepository to create a new repository under the specified owner. This automatically initializes the repository with a default main branch and a README.md file to prevent subsequent commit errors.

Pass isPrivate as true (default) to create a private repository, or false for a public repository.

• GitHub Personal Repository Fallback: GitHub Apps are restricted by platform policy from programmatically creating repositories on personal (non-organization) accounts. If your repo creation fails due to this, you must explain this to the user on Turn 1 and instruct them to perform both steps: (1) complete the GitHub OAuth link, and (2) manually create a blank private repository named <repo-name> at https://github.com/new. Do NOT ask the user to check "Add a README file" — you can easily push files to a completely empty repository yourself.
• Programmatic Secrets Configuration (NO manual setup in dashboard): If your deployment or CI/CD workflow requires GitHub Secrets (such as DENO_DEPLOY_TOKEN, INSTANTDB_APP_ID, INSTANTDB_ADMIN_TOKEN, or PROMPT2BOT_SECRET), you MUST configure them programmatically using the gh secret set CLI on the VM (utilizing the stored GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable). You are strictly forbidden from directing users to the GitHub settings page or asking them to configure secrets manually. Only ask them for the raw API tokens in the chat, and then write those secrets to their repository programmatically yourself!

Pass issueNumber as a string, for example "11".