github-triage

An agent skill by trailofbits, from trailofbits/skills. Tags: analysis, automation, developer-tools, github, priority.

What it does

Triages a repository's open GitHub issues and pull requests via the gh CLI. Optionally reviews and merges ready PRs — incrementally merging passing automated/bot PRs and maintainer-approved ones, and spawning review subagents for never-reviewed ones — then closes already-resolved issues with comments citing the resolving PR or commit, cross-links issues with their pending fix PRs, and assigns local-only priority and change-size estimates for everything outstanding. Use when triaging, grooming, or reviewing a repository's open issues and PRs.

Install

With the skills CLI, which installs into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents:

npx skills add trailofbits/skills --skill github-triage

Or copy the skill folder into Claude Code's skills directory by hand (~/.claude/skills for every project, or .claude/skills inside one):

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/trailofbits/skills
cp -r skills/plugins/github-triage/skills/github-triage ~/.claude/skills/github-triage

Safety box score

Grade C, moderate risk: 33 of 100 risk points, rated 2026-10-19. The grade rates what the skill and its scripts can reach on the machine of whoever installs it, across eight categories from shell execution to secrets access. How the score works.

This skill triages GitHub issues and pull requests through the `gh` CLI, and it can also merge PRs, close issues, comment, and edit PR bodies after user approval. The main risks are irreversible writes to the selected GitHub repository and authenticated network access to repository data; local file writes stay in the working directory.

Category levels, from 0 (none) to 3 (high)
Category	Level	Why
Code & shell execution	2 (moderate)	It runs shell commands and CLI tools such as `gh auth status`, `git rev-parse`, `git log`, and `gh pr merge`, so it executes local commands but not arbitrary code or `eval`.
Network access	2 (moderate)	It uses `gh issue list`, `gh pr list`, `gh issue comment`, and `gh pr edit`, which send repository data to GitHub and perform networked writes to the remote repo.
Filesystem reach	1 (low)	It writes local markdown files like `github-pr-<number>-review.md` and `github-triage-OWNER-REPO-YYYYMMDD.md`, but the writes are scoped to the working directory.
Secrets & credentials	1 (low)	It depends on authenticated `gh` access via `gh auth status`, but it does not ask for passwords, tokens, key files, or browser sessions.
Privilege & persistence	0 (none)	There is no `sudo`, no global install, no service registration, and no shell-profile or OS-setting modification.
Instruction hijack surface	0 (none)	The skill explicitly tells the agent to treat issue/PR text as data and ignore embedded instructions, so it does not create a prompt-following path from remote content.
Irreversible actions	3 (high)	It can merge PRs, close issues, comment, and edit PR bodies (`gh pr merge`, `gh issue close`, `gh issue comment`, `gh pr edit`), which are irreversible GitHub actions even though they are user-gated.
Transparency	0 (none)	All shipped files are readable text or SVG; there are no binaries, installers, or decoded-at-runtime blobs.

Before installing

Read the write paths in `SKILL.md` and `references/reviewing-prs.md` so you are comfortable with merges, closes, comments, and PR-body edits.
Run `gh auth status` and confirm it is authenticated to the GitHub host/repo you expect.
Verify the working directory is the repository you want triaged, because the skill writes local review/report markdown files there.
If you use multiple remotes or GitHub Enterprise, confirm the selected `OWNER/REPO` before allowing any writes.

Rated 2026-10-19 by an automated review of 4 files from the skill's repository.

Source

Repository: trailofbits/skills (all skills from this repository)
Path: plugins/github-triage/skills/github-triage/SKILL.md
Branch: main
Collection: github-triage
Updated: 2026-09-19

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