gh-logs

CI log analyst. Fetches GitHub Actions logs via gh, reasons about them, classifies the failure, and suggests a fix with a verify step. The terminal is faster than the web UI and won't crash on 50MB of test output.

This skill runs in a forked context so that megabytes of raw log never land in the main conversation — only your finished diagnosis returns. That also means you have no conversation history: everything you need is below, plus $ARGUMENTS.

Request: $ARGUMENTS — if that is blank or still shows the literal placeholder, no arguments were passed: run the default diagnose flow against the most recent failure.

Preflight

• Repo: !gh repo view --json nameWithOwner --jq .nameWithOwner
• Branch: !git branch --show-current
• Auth: !gh auth status
• Recent failures (all branches): !gh run list --status failure --limit 5 --json databaseId,displayTitle,workflowName,headBranch,createdAt

If auth failed above, tell the user to run gh auth login and stop. If the repo lookup failed, ask which repo to target. Otherwise prefer a failure on the current branch; fall back to the list above.

Reference files live in ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/.

Modes

Every mode reports through a template in references/analysis-templates.md. A <workflow-name> argument narrows any mode to one workflow. Full gh invocation cookbook: references/gh-commands.md.

When NOT to use

• Viewing passing-run logs for debugging successful runs — use gh run view <id> --log directly.
• Editing workflow YAML — this skill reads runs, it doesn't author workflows.
• Running or re-running workflows — that's gh workflow run / gh run rerun.

Default workflow (diagnose)

1. Find the run

The Preflight block already resolved repo, branch, and recent failures. If a run ID was passed, use it directly. Otherwise narrow to the current branch:

BRANCH=$(git branch --show-current)
gh run list --branch "$BRANCH" --status failure --limit 1 \
  --json databaseId,displayTitle,conclusion,event,headBranch,workflowName,createdAt

If that is empty, fall back to the all-branches list from Preflight. With a workflow name — add --workflow <name>.

2. Get the overview

gh run view <run-id> --json jobs \
  --jq '.jobs[] | {name, conclusion, steps: [.steps[] | select(.conclusion == "failure") | {name, conclusion}]}'

This tells you which jobs failed and which steps inside them.

3. Fetch the failing logs

gh run view <run-id> --log-failed > /tmp/run-<run-id>.log
${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/classify-log.sh /tmp/run-<run-id>.log

Run the classifier before reading the log by hand: failed-step output is routinely 5000+ lines, and the script greps it against one signature regex per category, printing the hit count and the first five matching lines (with line numbers) for each, then primary: <category> — the most upstream category that matched. That narrows a wall of text to the lines that matter and tells you where to sed -n next.

If the log is still unwieldy, narrow to one job: gh run view <run-id> --job <job-id> --log-failed. If even that is too large, gh api the raw log and grep for error/FAIL/fatal.

4. Classify

Start from the classifier's primary: line, then confirm against the surrounding log and references/failure-patterns.md — the script only sees signatures, not causality. Pick one primary category:

When multiple categories match (common — e.g., an OOM during tests looks like both infra and test): pick the most upstream cause, because that's what needs to be fixed. Priority: auth > deps > build > infra > lint > test > timeout. A test failing because deps didn't install is a deps bug, not a test bug. When it's genuinely ambiguous, surface both and ask the user which feels right — a wrong classification leads to a wrong fix.

5. Report

Use the diagnosis template in references/analysis-templates.md. Always include:

1. Category and the failed step / job name
2. Root cause — 1–2 sentences, specific
3. Log excerpt — the lines that proved it, truncated if long
4. Suggested fix — actionable, with commands or code
5. Verify command — how to re-run and confirm the fix worked

Other modes

Flaky test detection — --flaky

gh run list --branch "$BRANCH" --limit 20 --json databaseId,conclusion

For each failed run, extract failed test names from the log. Tests that fail in some runs but pass in others are flaky. Report with pass/fail ratio and the suspected mechanism (race condition, timing dependency, shared port, external service, test ordering). See references/analysis-templates.md for the output shape.

Slow step profiling — --slow

gh run view --json jobs returns startedAt / completedAt on every step (gh 2.60+, camelCase):

gh run view <run-id> --json jobs --jq '
  [.jobs[].steps[] | select(.completedAt != null and .startedAt != null) |
   {name, duration: ((.completedAt | fromdateiso8601) - (.startedAt | fromdateiso8601))}] |
  sort_by(-.duration) | .[] | "\(.duration)s\t\(.name)"'

Durations come back sorted descending — identify bottlenecks and suggest cache, parallelism, or dropping the step. On gh older than 2.60 the steps carry no timestamps; use the REST fallback in references/gh-commands.md (same filter, snake_case fields).

History — --history [n]

gh run list --status failure --limit <n> \
  --json databaseId,displayTitle,conclusion,event,headBranch,workflowName,createdAt

For each, pull failed job/step names. Surface recurring patterns: same step, specific branch, time-of-day correlation.

Watch — --watch

gh run watch --exit-status

When it finishes, if it failed, drop into diagnose mode on the resulting run ID.

Example — auto-diagnose

User: /gh-logs

Claude: Checking CI for branch feat/auth-flow...
Found failed run #4521 (CI / test) from 3 minutes ago.

## Diagnosis

Category: test
Failed step: Run tests (job: test-ubuntu)
Root cause: Snapshot mismatch in LoginForm — expected output changed after adding the "Remember me" checkbox.

Log excerpt:
  FAIL src/components/LoginForm.test.tsx
  - renders login form (2ms)
    Expected: "<form>..."
    Received: "<form>...<label>Remember me</label>..."
  1 snapshot failed.

Fix:
  <test-runner> -u src/components/LoginForm.test.tsx   # e.g. vitest -u / jest -u, via the project's package manager

Verify:
  Commit the updated snapshot (hand off to /commit), push, then `gh run watch`.

More session shapes (flaky / slow / history) are in references/analysis-templates.md.

Edge cases

Reference index

• references/failure-patterns.md — log signature database by language / category
• references/analysis-templates.md — output templates for each mode
• references/gh-commands.md — complete gh CLI command cookbook with jq filters