Get Issues

get-issues

Enumerate issues from whichever tracker is active (GitLab, GitHub, ClickUp, or Jira) and hand back either a compact summary of the result set or the full body of a single ticket the user cares about. The skill is always a read-only operation — it never mutates state.

When to use

• The user asks "what issues are open?", "show me the backlog", or names a label / assignee they want to filter by.
• Another skill (e.g. solve-issue) needs to look up a specific ticket before acting on it.
• The agent is gathering context for a daily report or status update.

Procedure

1. Scope the query

Most useful filters live directly on get_issues:

# Default: 20 most recently updated open issues
devboy tools call get_issues '{"state": "open", "limit": 20}'

# Narrow by label / assignee / free-text search
devboy tools call get_issues '{"state": "open", "labels": ["bug"], "assignee": "alice"}'
devboy tools call get_issues '{"search": "websocket reconnect", "limit": 10}'

Supported keys: state (open / closed / all), search, labels, assignee, limit (1–100), offset, sort_by (created_at / updated_at), sort_order (asc / desc), projectKey, nativeQuery. On Jira, nativeQuery accepts raw JQL and takes precedence over the other filters.

2. Paginate when the result set is large

get_issues returns at most 100 items per call. Walk the pages with offset:

devboy tools call get_issues '{"state": "open", "limit": 50, "offset": 0}'
devboy tools call get_issues '{"state": "open", "limit": 50, "offset": 50}'

Stop once a page returns fewer items than limit.

3. Summarise the set

Before dumping the raw list to the user, produce a compact roll-up:

• Total count, grouped by state (open / closed).
• Top labels and assignees by frequency.
• Any priority or status values that cluster (e.g. "4 urgent, 12 normal").

If the user asked a qualitative question ("is anything blocking the release?"), prioritise issues with blocked, urgent, or in_progress status over a flat listing.

4. Drill into a single issue

Once the user picks one, fetch the full record — including comments and relations in a single call:

devboy tools call get_issue '{"key": "DEV-123"}'
# or, to skip related chatter
devboy tools call get_issue '{"key": "DEV-123", "includeComments": false, "includeRelations": false}'

For heavier comment threads, page them separately:

devboy tools call get_issue_comments '{"key": "DEV-123"}'
devboy tools call get_issue_relations '{"key": "DEV-123"}'

5. (Optional) Enumerate tracker statuses

If the user asks "what states can an issue be in?", surface the tracker's workflow:

devboy tools call get_available_statuses

This is handy before calling update-issue on a provider whose state vocabulary is not "open / closed".

Success criteria

• The filtered result set matches what the user asked for (state, label, assignee).
• The summary names the total count and the top groupings, not just the first page.
• For any issue the user inspects, the detail call returns real fields — not ProviderUnsupported or an empty payload.

Non-goals

• This skill does not create, update, or close issues — use create-issue / update-issue.
• It does not start a branch or MR — that is solve-issue.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: meteora-pro
• Source: meteora-pro/devboy-tools
• License: Apache-2.0
• Homepage: https://meteora-pro.github.io/devboy-tools/

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.