Using GitHub CLI in workflows

You can script with GitHub CLI in GitHub Actions workflows.

Note

To learn more about GitHub CLI, see About GitHub CLI.

GitHub CLI is preinstalled on all GitHub-hosted runners. For each step that uses GitHub CLI, you must set an environment variable called GH_TOKEN to a token with the required scopes.

You can execute any GitHub CLI command. For example, this workflow uses the gh issue comment subcommand to add a comment when an issue is opened.

YAML
name: Comment when opened
on:
  issues:
    types:
      - opened
jobs:
  comment:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - run: gh issue comment $ISSUE --body "Thank you for opening this issue!"
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          ISSUE: ${{ github.event.issue.html_url }}

You can also execute API calls through GitHub CLI. For example, this workflow first uses the gh api subcommand to query the GraphQL API and parse the result. Then it stores the result in an environment variable that it can access in a later step. In the second step, it uses the gh issue create subcommand to create an issue containing the information from the first step.

YAML
name: Report remaining open issues
on: 
  schedule: 
    # Daily at 8:20 UTC
    - cron: '20 8 * * *'
jobs:
  track_pr:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - run: |
          numOpenIssues="$(gh api graphql -F owner=$OWNER -F name=$REPO -f query='
            query($name: String!, $owner: String!) {
              repository(owner: $owner, name: $name) {
                issues(states:OPEN){
                  totalCount
                }
              }
            }
          ' --jq '.data.repository.issues.totalCount')"

          echo 'NUM_OPEN_ISSUES='$numOpenIssues >> $GITHUB_ENV
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          OWNER: ${{ github.repository_owner }}
          REPO: ${{ github.event.repository.name }}
      - run: |
          gh issue create --title "Issue report" --body "$NUM_OPEN_ISSUES issues remaining" --repo $GITHUB_REPOSITORY
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}