gh moves most of what you do on github.com into the terminal. The biggest gain is losing the open-a-browser, find-the-tab, click-the-button loop.

Install and authenticate 

  brew install gh
sudo apt install gh
winget install GitHub.cli

gh auth login          # browser flow
gh auth status         # check who you are

Pull requests 

  gh pr create --fill                  # title and body from your commits
gh pr create --draft --title "WIP: auth refactor"

gh pr list                           # open PRs
gh pr list --author "@me"            # just yours
gh pr status                         # everything relevant to you

gh pr checkout 42                    # switch to a PR branch to review it
gh pr diff 42                        # see the changes
gh pr review 42 --approve
gh pr review 42 --request-changes -b "Could you add a test for this?"
gh pr merge 42 --squash --delete-branch

gh pr checkout is especially good when reviewing: you don’t need to know the remote branch name, just the number.

Issues 

  gh issue create --title "Redirect fails after login" --body "Steps to reproduce..."
gh issue list --label bug --state open
gh issue view 17 --comments
gh issue close 17

Watching Actions 

  gh run list --limit 5          # recent runs
gh run watch                   # follow the run in progress
gh run view <run-id> --log-failed   # only the failing step's log
gh workflow run deploy.yml     # trigger manually

gh run watch replaces the push-then-refresh-the-browser habit entirely.

Repositories 

  gh repo create myorg/newrepo --private --source=. --remote=origin --push
gh repo clone jeonck/toolian
gh repo view --web            # open it in a browser
gh release create v1.2.0 --generate-notes

Calling the API directly

Anything the CLI doesn’t wrap, call with gh api — authentication comes along for free.

  gh api repos/jeonck/toolian --jq '.stargazers_count'
gh api -X PUT repos/jeonck/toolian/pages -f cname=toolian.metacog.co.kr

For boolean values, use capital -F rather than lowercase -f, so a real JSON boolean goes over the wire instead of a string.

  gh api -X PUT repos/OWNER/REPO/pages -F https_enforced=true

Aliases 

  gh alias set prs 'pr list --author "@me"'
gh alias set co 'pr checkout'
gh prs
gh co 42

Next

To stage and browse history visually → lazygit

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Last updated 19 Aug 2026, 00:00 UTC. history