matthewp/gh-skills/github-api

GitHub REST API

Use this skill to read and write GitHub data through the REST API at https://api.github.com. You issue the HTTP requests yourself with whatever capability you have — a shell (curl), an HTTP request tool, or a language runtime. This skill tells you which request to make and how to read the result.

Using your token

This skill makes calls with a token provided to you — it does not log anyone in or obtain credentials itself.

• Use the token from GITHUB_TOKEN, or one handed to you by the caller

(orchestrator, workflow, or environment).

• Send it as Authorization: Bearer <token> on every request, together with

Accept: application/vnd.github+json and X-GitHub-Api-Version: 2022-11-28.

• If no token is available, stop and say so — you cannot acquire one here.

(The github-client skill handles interactive OAuth login; this skill is for headless use where a token is supplied.)

• Only ever send the token to api.github.com — never put it in a URL, send it

to another host, echo it, or write it to a shared/committed file.

When is a token required? Public, read-only data works without one but is capped at 60 requests/hour (authenticated: 5,000/hour), and private resources are invisible (they return 404). Anything private, any write, and search/code require a token.

The request shape

Every call is METHOD https://api.github.com<path> with the three headers above. Paths use {owner}/{repo} and resource ids, e.g. /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{number}. Bodies (for POST/PATCH) are JSON; add -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{...}'.

Most-used recipes

5 most recent open issues in a repo (newest first; note: this endpoint also returns pull requests — skip any item that has a pull_request field):

curl -sS "https://api.github.com/repos/vercel/next.js/issues?state=open&sort=created&direction=desc&per_page=5" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GITHUB_TOKEN" -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json"

Search issues/PRs across GitHub (returns { total_count, items }):

curl -sS "https://api.github.com/search/issues?q=repo:facebook/react+is:issue+is:open+label:bug&sort=created&order=desc&per_page=5" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GITHUB_TOKEN" -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json"

One issue with its body: GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{number} Recent commits on a branch: GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/commits?sha={branch}&per_page=10 A file's contents: GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/contents/{path}?ref={branch} (content is base64; or send Accept: application/vnd.github.raw for the raw bytes).

See references/endpoints.md for the full catalog and references/search-syntax.md for search qualifiers.

Conventions that trip people up

• "Most recent" / "latest" → sort=created&direction=desc. "Top N" → per_page=N.
• The repo issues list includes PRs. Filter them out by checking for a pull_request key on each item.
• Pagination: per_page (max 100) + page. The response Link header carries rel="next"; follow it to page, stop when it's absent.
• Dates are ISO 8601 UTC (2026-06-19T20:13:00Z). Search supports ranges like created:>=2026-01-01.
• Search has its own, lower rate limit (~30 requests/min) and caps results at 1,000 — narrow the query rather than paging deeply.
• Prefer the smallest request: a specific path + per_page over fetching everything and filtering client-side.

Errors & rate limits

• 401 invalid/expired token — the supplied token is bad or expired; request a fresh one from whoever provided it. 403 often a rate-limit or permission issue · 404 missing or no access (GitHub hides private resources as 404) · 422 validation error (bad query/params).
• Check X-RateLimit-Remaining and X-RateLimit-Reset (epoch seconds). On 403/429 with a Retry-After header, wait that many seconds before retrying. Back off on secondary-rate-limit messages.
• On error, the JSON body has a message and often a documentation_url — read it before retrying.