gh-assign-issues

Retarget or assign a set of Codewhale issues to a milestone and/or owners in bulk, verifying every one. The milestone (or assignee) change is the signal; do not narrate it with comments. Use gh for all GitHub calls.

When to use

• You have a concrete list of issue numbers (e.g. from triage) to move into a release milestone such as the current vX.Y.Z, or to assign to owners.
• A milestone was renamed/created and its issues need re-pointing.
• You finished grouping the inbox and want the queue to reflect it without posting public chatter.

This skill changes milestone/assignee only. It does not close, label, comment, merge, or release. Those stay with the maintainer.

Workflow

1. Confirm the exact milestone title. gh issue edit --milestone matches by name, so a typo silently fails (or worse, no-ops). Read the real titles and note the starting open-count:

   gh api repos/Hmbown/CodeWhale/milestones \
     --jq '.[] | "\(.number)\t\(.title)\topen=\(.open_issues)\tstate=\(.state)"'
   

   Copy the title string verbatim (e.g. the live vX.Y.Z title). If the target milestone is missing or closed, stop and ask the maintainer; do not create one.

2. Pre-flight each number. gh issue edit will happily retarget a PR or a closed issue, so screen first. The url reveals PR-vs-issue (/pull/ vs /issues/); skip anything not OPEN or that is a PR:

   for N in <N1> <N2> <N3>; do   # substitute the real issue numbers
     gh issue view "$N" --repo Hmbown/CodeWhale \
       --json number,state,url,milestone \
       --jq '"\(.number)\t\(.state)\t\(.url)\tmilestone=\(.milestone.title // "none")"'
   done
   

   Flag any row whose url contains /pull/ (it is a PR) or whose state is not OPEN, and exclude it from the loop below.

3. Apply the change, one issue at a time, reporting per-issue success. Use --milestone, --add-assignee, or both:

   for N in <N1> <N2> <N3>; do   # substitute the real issue numbers
     if gh issue edit "$N" --repo Hmbown/CodeWhale \
          --milestone "<milestone>" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
       echo "ok   #$N -> <milestone>"
     else
       echo "FAIL #$N (PR? closed? bad milestone title?)"
     fi
   done
   # owners: add --add-assignee handle (do not invent logins)
   

   Edit is idempotent: re-pointing an already-correct issue is harmless.

4. Verify the milestone moved. Re-run the step-1 command and confirm the open count rose by the number of issues you moved in (minus any you skipped). Spot-check a few with the step-2 view to confirm milestone.title is now the target.

5. Report a tight ledger: issues moved, issues skipped and why (PR / closed / title mismatch), the before/after open-count, and any owner assignments. No public comment is posted.

Red flags / don't

• Don't edit from a list of titles alone. Resolve to OPEN issue numbers and confirm each is an issue, not a PR (/pull/ in the url), before editing.
• Don't guess the milestone title or assignee login. A near-miss name no-ops or fails silently; an invalid login errors mid-loop.
• Don't post "moved to " comments. The milestone change is the signal; extra chatter is noise to good-faith contributors.
• Don't close, merge, label, tag, or release as part of this. Those need explicit maintainer approval (see AGENTS.md).
• Don't skip step 4. An unmoved open-count means the title was wrong or every edit silently failed.
• Preserve contributor credit: this skill never alters authorship, harvest markers (Co-authored-by / Harvested from PR #N), or closing references.