What is managing-lifecycle?

This Claude skill enables comprehensive management of GitHub Issues and Pull Requests directly through the agent. It provides a robust interface for full CRUD operations, state management, and metadata updates. By leveraging GitHub CLI capabilities, it allows users to automate project tracking, streamline triage workflows, and perform bulk updates, significantly enhancing developer productivity and repository maintenance.

When should I use managing-lifecycle?

managing-lifecycle is useful in the following scenarios: • Automated Issue Triage: Automatically categorize incoming bug reports or feature requests by adding labels, assigning team members, and linking milestones based on issue content. • Bulk Issue Maintenance: Clean up backlogs by searching for stale issues and performing batch operations such as closing, re-labeling, or adding comments to multiple items simultaneously. • Knowledge Base Integration: Create and organize documentation or 'how-to' guides as GitHub Issues using predefined templates to maintain a searchable project knowledge base. • Workflow Automation: Streamline the development lifecycle by programmatically transitioning issue states (e.g., from 'open' to 'resolved') and managing PR comments during the code review process.

name	managing-lifecycle
description	Create, update, close, and bulk process GitHub Issues with state management and metadata updates. Use for CRUD operations, changing issue states, or batch processing.

Issue Lifecycle Operations

Capability: Complete CRUD operations for GitHub Issues and PRs

When to use: Creating, reading, updating, deleting, commenting on issues/PRs

Create Operations

Create Issue

# Basic creation
gh issue create --title "Bug: Login fails" --body "Steps to reproduce..."

# With labels and assignee
gh issue create \
  --title "Feature: Add dark mode" \
  --body "User requested dark mode support" \
  --label feature,ui \
  --assignee username

# From file
gh issue create --title "API Documentation" --body-file doc.md

# Interactive mode
gh issue create

Create with Template

# Knowledge base entry
gh issue create \
  --repo terrylica/claude-code-skills-github-issues \
  --title "Claude Code: Using Plan Mode" \
  --label claude-code,tips,how-to \
  --body-file tip.md

Read Operations

View Issue

# Web view
gh issue view 123 --web

# Terminal view
gh issue view 123

# JSON output (21 fields available)
gh issue view 123 --json title,body,state,labels,assignees,createdAt

List Issues

# List open issues
gh issue list

# Filter by assignee
gh issue list --assignee @me

# Filter by label
gh issue list --label bug --state open

# Limit results
gh issue list --limit 50

Update Operations

Modify Issue

# Update title
gh issue edit 123 --title "New title"

# Update body
gh issue edit 123 --body "Updated description"

# Add labels
gh issue edit 123 --add-label priority:high,bug

# Remove labels
gh issue edit 123 --remove-label wontfix

# Change assignee
gh issue edit 123 --add-assignee username

State Management

# Close issue
gh issue close 123

# Close with comment
gh issue close 123 --comment "Fixed in commit abc123"

# Reopen issue
gh issue reopen 123

# Mark as resolved
gh issue close 123 --reason completed

# Mark as won't fix
gh issue close 123 --reason "not planned"

Comment Operations

# Add comment
gh issue comment 123 --body "Thanks for reporting this!"

# Comment from file
gh issue comment 123 --body-file response.md

# Edit comment (requires comment ID)
gh api repos/owner/repo/issues/comments/COMMENT_ID \
  --method PATCH \
  --field body="Updated comment"

Delete Operations

# Delete issue (careful - permanent!)
gh issue delete 123

# Delete with confirmation skip
gh issue delete 123 --yes

# Note: Prefer closing over deleting for audit trail

Batch Operations

Close Multiple Issues

# Close all issues with specific label
gh issue list --label wontfix --json number --jq '.[].number' | \
  xargs -I {} gh issue close {} --reason "not planned"

# Close old issues
gh search issues "is:open created:<2024-01-01" --json number --jq '.[].number' | \
  xargs -I {} gh issue close {}

Bulk Label Updates

# Add label to multiple issues
for issue in 101 102 103; do
  gh issue edit $issue --add-label priority:high
done

Common Workflows

Knowledge Base Entry Workflow

# 1. Create issue with content
gh issue create --title "Tip: Git worktrees" --body-file tip.md

# 2. Add labels
gh issue edit 1 --add-label git,tips,how-to

# 3. Verify created
gh issue view 1

Issue Triage Workflow

# 1. List new issues
gh issue list --label needs-triage

# 2. Review and categorize
gh issue edit 123 --add-label bug --remove-label needs-triage

# 3. Assign if needed
gh issue edit 123 --add-assignee dev-team

JSON Output Fields (21 available)

Core: number, title, body, state, url Metadata: labels, assignees, milestone, projectCards Timestamps: createdAt, updatedAt, closedAt Engagement: comments, reactions Users: author, participants Full list: gh issue view --help

Best Practices

Prefer closing over deleting - Maintains audit trail
Use labels for organization - Better than comments
Atomic updates - One change per command for clarity
JSON for automation - Script with --json and --jq
Batch carefully - Test on single issue first

Empirical Testing: 200+ test cases covering all CRUD operations

Full Operational Guide: AI_AGENT_OPERATIONAL_GUIDE.md

managing-lifecycle

When & Why to Use This Skill

Use Cases