Github status

Context

• Config file: !test -f ~/.claude/skills/github-status/config/config.env && echo PRESENT || echo MISSING
• GitHub user (script default): AnotherSava — override via GITHUB_USER env var

1. Ensure PROJECTS_ROOT is configured

If Config file above is MISSING:

1. Ask the user (via AskUserQuestion) for the absolute path to the directory that contains all their local git clones. Suggest $HOME/Projects as the default if the user is on macOS, or $HOME/code on Linux.

2. Write ~/.claude/skills/github-status/config/config.env with this exact content (substituting <absolute path>):

   # github-status skill config — gitignored, user-specific
   PROJECTS_ROOT="<absolute path>"
   

If Config file is PRESENT, proceed directly to step 2.

2. Run the report

First, detect the terminal width so the table fills the screen. The script's stdout is piped, which hides the real width from it, so determine it yourself:

• Windows: use the PowerShell tool to evaluate $Host.UI.RawUI.WindowSize.Width. Use the PowerShell tool specifically — running powershell.exe from the Bash tool returns the wrong value (it gets its own console, not the real one).
• macOS/Linux: run tput cols (or read $COLUMNS).
• If you can't determine it, omit --width; the script falls back to the GHS_WIDTH line in config.env, then to 120.

Then subtract a gutter margin of 2 and pass the result as --width <N>. Claude Code's TUI indents message/tool output by a couple of columns, so a table exactly as wide as the window has its right border clipped off-screen — the margin keeps the whole table visible. (e.g. a 156-column window → --width 154.)

Then run python3 ~/.claude/skills/github-status/scripts/repos-status.py --width <N> (drop --width if undetected). The script output has up to three parts:

1. Table, fixed-width. A repo appears if it has pending work (uncommitted changes, unpushed commits, or inbound remote commits after the auto-pull pass) or at least one open issue on its origin; everything else is filtered out. Rows are sorted by AGE ascending (freshest pending work first; oldest at the bottom). Issue-only repos have no pending-work age, so they sort to the very bottom with blank LOCAL/AGE cells. Columns:
   • PROJECT is always present.
   • BRANCH appears only if any repo is on a branch other than main or master.
   • UNPUSHED appears only if any repo has unpushed commits (@{upstream}..HEAD > 0).
   • REMOTE appears only if any repo is behind its upstream (HEAD..@{upstream} > 0). Shows the count of commits inbound from the remote. A trailing ✓ (e.g. 4 ✓) means the script auto-pulled those commits via fast-forward; the displayed count is the pre-pull behind count. Auto-pull happens only when the repo also has no uncommitted changes (LOCAL empty); diverged branches (UNPUSHED > 0) fail the fast-forward check and show the count without a ✓.
   • LOCAL appears only if any repo has uncommitted entries. Format is N (+A/-D) (e.g. 5 (-211), 6 (+530/-61)), where N is the porcelain entry count and (+A/-D) is the line-level diff in parentheses. Either side of +A/-D is omitted when 0; if there's no line diff at all (rare — e.g., untracked dir with only binaries) the cell shows just N. Lines come from git diff HEAD --numstat for tracked files plus wc -l of each untracked text file (untracked counts entirely as additions). Binary files (NUL-byte sniff) and files > 1 MB are skipped.
   • AGE appears only if any repo has unpushed commits or uncommitted changes. Shows the age of the oldest pending work in short human form ("5 hours", "2 weeks", "1 year"). The age is the older of (oldest uncommitted-file mtime, oldest unpushed-commit committer date) for that repo. Deleted files can't contribute (no mtime survives a delete) — for a repo with only deletions, this falls back to whatever commits exist.
   • ISSUES appears only if any shown repo has at least one open issue. Shows the count of open GitHub issues (pull requests excluded) on the repo's own origin — the query is pinned to the origin slug with gh issue list --repo OWNER/REPO, so a fork reports its own issues, never its upstream parent's. A blank cell means zero open issues, issues disabled on the fork, or that gh was unavailable/unauthenticated for that repo. A repo with open issues but no pending git work still appears (as its own row), with the other columns blank and DESCRIPTION —.
   • DESCRIPTION appears only if any repo has unpushed commits or uncommitted changes — populated with <analyze below> for those repos, — for the rest. You fill this in per step 3.
2. Uncommitted changes section — per-repo git status --porcelain listing for every dirty repo. Each line starts with a 2-char status: X (staged) Y (unstaged). Spaces are rendered as · for column alignment — e.g. ·M file (unstaged modify), M· file (staged modify), MM file (both), ?? file (untracked), ·D file (unstaged deletion).
3. Unpushed commits section — per-repo git log @{upstream}..HEAD --format="%h %s" for every repo with unpushed work. This is the raw data you use in step 3.

The script's table contains placeholders by design — you are not meant to paste it verbatim. Read off its columns and cell values, then feed them back through the script's --render mode with the DESCRIPTION cells filled in (see step 3).

3. Re-render the table with descriptions filled in

Read the "Uncommitted changes" and "Unpushed commits" sections from the script output. For every repo whose row shows <analyze below>, synthesize a one-line description of what the in-flight / unpushed work accomplishes (≤ ~80 chars; focus on the user-visible change or theme, not file- or commit-level detail).

• If a repo has BOTH uncommitted changes and unpushed commits, combine them into one line — e.g. "Mid-flight macOS deploy support; 3 commits already; 2 docs files still uncommitted."
• If a repo has only one kind, describe just that.
• Repos with — in the DESCRIPTION cell stay as —.

Then render the final table with the script's own renderer — do NOT hand-draw the box table. The DESCRIPTION column stretches to fill the --width you pass (the same width detected in step 2), padding short text to the right edge and wrapping long text across lines — fiddly to reproduce by hand. Build a JSON spec with the descriptions filled in and pipe it to --render, passing the same --width <N>:

python3 ~/.claude/skills/github-status/scripts/repos-status.py --render --width <N> <<'JSON'
{"columns": ["project", "branch", "remote", "local", "age", "issues", "description"],
 "rows": [
   {"project": "claude", "branch": "main", "remote": "6", "local": "20 (+669/-52)", "age": "3 days", "issues": "", "description": "<your one-line summary>"}
 ]}
JSON

• columns lists the column keys (project, branch, remote, local, age, issues, description) that appeared in the script's table, in the same order. Omit any column the script omitted.
• Each row is a dict keyed by those column keys. Copy every non-description cell value verbatim from the script's table (including any ✓ marker and blank cells); set description to your one-line summary, or — for repos the script marked —. Project names use forward slashes (e.g. bga/assistant), so no backslash escaping is needed.
• If a description contains a character awkward for a single-quoted heredoc (a literal backslash, or the JSON end marker), write the spec to a file instead and pass its path: repos-status.py --render path/to/spec.json.
• Paste the renderer's output verbatim as the user-facing report — it is already width-bounded and aligned.

Do NOT paste the "Uncommitted changes" or "Unpushed commits" sections to the user — those are raw data for your analysis, not part of the user-facing report. The DESCRIPTION cell already summarizes them.

Do not show the script's original placeholder table either; your filled table replaces it. The user sees: just the filled table.

Behavior notes

• Origin-URL filter: only repos whose origin matches github.com[:/]$GITHUB_USER/ appear. Third-party clones living under PROJECTS_ROOT (e.g. forks of upstream tools) are skipped automatically.
• Forks are counted if AnotherSava owns the origin — even when they have an upstream remote pointing at the original author.
• Hard exclusions: notion and claude-mermaid-fix. To change the list, edit the EXCLUDED set at the top of scripts/repos-status.py.
• Fetches every run. Before reading state, the script runs git fetch --quiet per repo in parallel (max 16 workers, 30s timeout each). Failures are swallowed — a dead remote or offline machine just means the displayed counts fall back to whatever the local tracking refs already knew.
• Auto-pulls clean repos. After collecting state, the script runs git pull --ff-only --quiet in parallel for every repo where REMOTE > 0 AND LOCAL is empty (no uncommitted changes). --ff-only guarantees no merge commits — diverged branches fail safely and stay unpulled. Successful pulls add a trailing ✓ to the REMOTE column value.
• Counts open issues via gh. For every owned repo (not just the pending-work set — a repo can earn a row on open issues alone), the script runs gh issue list --repo OWNER/REPO --state open (in parallel, PRs excluded) to populate the ISSUES column. The OWNER/REPO slug is parsed from the repo's origin URL and passed explicitly — without --repo, gh would auto-resolve a fork to its upstream parent and report the wrong project's issues. This is the only GitHub API call the skill makes; if gh is missing, unauthenticated, the fork has issues disabled, or it times out, the cell falls back to blank rather than failing the run.
• Full-width, elastic DESCRIPTION. The table fills the target width and the DESCRIPTION column is elastic — it takes whatever the fixed columns leave, padding short text out to the right edge and wrapping long text across lines. Target width resolves as: --width N (or GHS_WIDTH env) → the GHS_WIDTH line in config.env → the detected terminal width → 120. A piped stdout can't see the real terminal, which is why step 2 detects the width and passes --width — minus a 2-column gutter margin, because Claude Code indents message/tool output and a table as wide as the window gets its right border clipped. DESCRIPTION won't shrink below ~18 chars — past that the table overflows rather than producing unreadable one-word ribbons.
• Forward-slash project names. Project names are rendered with / separators on every platform (not Windows \), so they round-trip cleanly through the --render JSON.
• UNPUSHED = commits in @{upstream}..HEAD (local-only commits the remote doesn't have).
• REMOTE = commits in HEAD..@{upstream} (remote commits you haven't pulled).
• LOCAL = git status --porcelain | wc -l (entry count) combined with line-level diff totals for both tracked and untracked text content.
• The per-file detail section reproduces git status --porcelain output for each dirty repo, with the leading XY status code's spaces replaced by · so the columns line up.
• Branches with no upstream show empty UNPUSHED / REMOTE cells; they appear only if they have local uncommitted changes, sorted alongside everything else by AGE.

See references/findings.md for background on the depth-4 walk, ownership filter rationale, and the explicit-exclusion history.

Out of scope

• Do NOT push, commit, stash, merge, rebase, or check out anything. The only mutations the skill performs are git fetch and git pull --ff-only on clean repos (both intentional, see Behavior notes).
• Do NOT scan paths outside PROJECTS_ROOT.
• Do NOT call the GitHub API beyond the open-issue count (gh issue list) — everything else is local git state only.