codewhale-hq / gh-assign-issues

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/codewhale-hq/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 codewhale-hq/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 "$N" --repo codewhale-hq/CodeWhale \
           --milestone "<milestone>" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
        echo "ok   #$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 <milestone>" 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.