bew/dotfiles/gh-read-file

Read a GitHub File with gh

Read a single concrete file reference supplied by the user or already in the task context. Do not search for additional paths or inspect neighboring files unless explicitly asked.

Parse the reference

Three accepted forms (fields needed: owner, repo, path; rev is absent for the default-branch form):

• Default branch: GH:owner/repo:path/to/file.md
• Explicit revision: GH:owner/repo@myrev:path/to/file.md
• GitHub blob URL: https://github.com/owner/repo/blob/myrev/path/to/file.md

Ignore URL query strings and fragments (e.g. ?plain=1, #L10-L20).

Read the file

For a default-branch reference: gh repo read-file "path/to/file.md" --repo "owner/repo"

For an explicit revision: gh repo read-file "path/to/file.md" --repo "owner/repo" --ref "myrev"

Use output as-is on success.

Failures

If exit code is non-zero:

• Report stderr verbatim and state the exact reference attempted.
• If not found or 404: stop; say the repository, revision, or path may be incorrect.
• If 401, 403, forbidden, or access denied: stop; tell the user to check

gh auth status and repository access.

• If reports gh repo read-file is unknown command:

stop; and tell the user that gh repo read-file requires >= 2.95.0.

Do not fall back to another GitHub mechanism. Do not attempt alternate refs or paths unless the user explicitly supplies a correction.

Rules

• Use gh CLI only. Never use curl, wget, gh api, raw GitHub URLs, or any HTTP client.
• Call gh repo read-file exactly once per explicitly requested file.