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GitHub CLI

The default bridge from coding agents to pull requests and issues.

Open SourceVerified: 2026-04-06

GitHub CLI is GitHub’s official command-line tool. It remains foundational for agentic engineering because most coding agents still need a reliable terminal path for pull requests, issue triage, release work, and repository automation.

Best for

Any team that reviews, merges, and automates work on GitHub.

Review summary

If your agent ships work through GitHub, `gh` is usually non-negotiable.

Pros

  • Official and stable
  • Excellent GitHub coverage
  • Easy to script

Cons

  • GitHub-specific
  • Not a coding agent by itself

Categories

Git & SCMWorkflow Automation
WebsiteGitHubDocs

Install

GitHub CLI’s official install docs currently recommend the official package repos and Homebrew.

Homebrew:

brew install gh

Debian / Ubuntu official package repo:

(type -p wget >/dev/null || (sudo apt update && sudo apt install wget -y)) \
  && sudo mkdir -p -m 755 /etc/apt/keyrings \
  && out=$(mktemp) && wget -nv -O$out https://cli.github.com/packages/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg \
  && cat $out | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null \
  && sudo chmod go+r /etc/apt/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg \
  && sudo mkdir -p -m 755 /etc/apt/sources.list.d \
  && echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg] https://cli.github.com/packages stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/github-cli.list > /dev/null \
  && sudo apt update \
  && sudo apt install gh -y

Quickstart

Authenticate first:

gh auth login

Then common first commands are:

gh repo clone cli/cli
gh issue list
gh pr status
GitHub CLI - CLI Hub