Githubbing

Install and use GitHub CLI (gh) for authenticated GitHub operations in Claude.ai container environments.

When to Use

• Creating/managing issues and PRs
• Repository operations (view, clone via API, releases)
• GitHub Actions workflow management
• Any operation where gh CLI is more ergonomic than raw REST API

For simple file fetches from public repos, prefer direct curl to raw.githubusercontent.com (no auth needed).

Setup

1. Install gh CLI

apt-get update -qq && apt-get install -y -qq gh

2. Configure Authentication

gh reads tokens from GH_TOKEN or GITHUB_TOKEN environment variables.

Using configuring skill:

from configuring import get_env
import os

token = get_env("GH_TOKEN") or get_env("GITHUB_TOKEN")
if token:
    os.environ["GH_TOKEN"] = token

Direct sourcing (if token in project files):

set -a; . /mnt/project/GitHub.env 2>/dev/null; set +a

3. Verify

gh auth status

Token Scopes

Minimum for most use cases: public_repo

Common Operations

# View repo info
gh repo view OWNER/REPO --json name,description

# Create issue
gh issue create --repo OWNER/REPO --title "Title" --body "Body"

# List issues
gh issue list --repo OWNER/REPO --state open

# Create PR
gh pr create --repo OWNER/REPO --title "Title" --body "Body" --base main

# View workflow runs
gh run list --repo OWNER/REPO

Relationship to accessing-github-repos

• accessing-github-repos: REST API + raw URLs (works without gh CLI)
• githubbing: gh CLI wrapper (more ergonomic for complex operations)

Both work through the container's egress proxy. Use whichever fits the task.