CLI

Every command, grouped the way the help groups them.

github <command> [arguments] [--flags]

Run github <command> --help for the exact flags on any command. Every command that takes a <ref> accepts the same three forms: owner/name, a github.com URL, or a github:// URI. Most of them also accept any URL from the repository, so a file URL or an issue URL names the repository it lives in.

Read

Command	What it does
`get <ref>`	Read whatever a reference points at
`repo <ref>`	Read one repository with every field the page states
`user <name>`	Read one user profile
`org <name>`	Read one organization
`issue <ref> [num]`	Read one issue with its body, labels, and participants
`pr <ref> [num]`	Read one pull request, merge state and review state included
`discussion <ref> [num]`	Read one discussion, its category, and its answer
`commit <ref> [sha]`	Read one commit, with its author, verification, and changed files
`compare <ref> [base] [head]`	Compare two refs and list what changed between them
`release <ref> [tag]`	Read one release by tag, or the latest one

Command	What it does
`tree <ref> [path]`	List a directory, or the whole tree with `--recursive`
`blob <ref> [path]`	Read one file's metadata, and its bytes on request
`cat <repo> <path>`	Write one file from a repository to stdout
`readme <repo>`	Write a repository's README to stdout
`diff <ref> [base] [head]`	Write a commit's or a range's diff to stdout
`archive <repo> [ref]`	Download a repository as a tarball or a zip
`symbols <ref> [path]`	List the definitions GitHub extracted from a file

symbols returns nothing today. GitHub still extracts them and no longer serves the list to a signed-out reader, and the command says so rather than pretending the file has none. See look inside a repository.

History

Command	What it does
`commits <ref>`	Walk a repository's history
`branches <ref>`	List branches
`tags <ref>`	List tags
`refs <ref>`	List every ref in a repository
`releases <ref>`	List releases
`timeline <ref> [num]`	List everything that happened on one issue or pull request

People

Command	What it does
`owned <name>`	List an account's repositories as the profile shows them
`stars <name>`	List what an account has starred
`followers <name>`	List who follows an account
`following <name>`	List who an account follows
`members <name>`	List an organization's public members
`activity <ref>`	Read a public activity feed
`contributions <name>`	Read an account's contribution calendar, one record per day
`gists <name>`	List an account's public gists
`gist <ref>`	Read one gist with its files

Discover

Command	What it does
`trending`	List what is trending
`topic <name>`	Read one topic page
`forks <ref>`	List a repository's public forks
`contributors <ref>`	List contributors with their commit, addition, and deletion counts
`languages <ref>`	Report the language histogram, one record per language
`stats <ref>`	Report a repository's counts and nothing else

contributors reads a route that answers 202 while GitHub computes the numbers, so the first call on a large repository waits a few seconds and every call after it is instant.

Search

Command	What it does
`search <query>`	Search every type at once
`repos [query]`	Search repositories
`issues [query]`	Search issues
`prs [query]`	Search pull requests
`users [query]`	Search users and organizations
`topics [query]`	Search topics
`packages [query]`	Search published packages
`actions [query]`	Search the marketplace for actions
`wikis [query]`	Search wiki pages
`code <query>`	Search code, which needs a session and so does not work here

code is listed because leaving it out would be the more confusing choice. GitHub gates code search behind a login, so the command reports that rather than returning an empty result that looks like an answer.

Graph

Command	What it does
`graph <ref>`	Emit the node, edges, and facts for one entity
`edges <ref>`	Emit only the edges for one entity
`crawl <ref>`	Walk the graph breadth-first from a seed
`export <ref>`	Write a whole graph to one file
`rdf <ref>`	Write an entity as RDF triples
`deps <ref>`	List what a repository depends on
`dependents <ref>`	List the repositories that depend on this one

See walk the graph and export linked data.

Command	What it does
`url <ref>`	Parse a reference and report what it names
`page <ref>`	Print everything a page carries, organised
`routes`	List which surface answers for which route
`doctor`	Check the environment, the site, and the cache
`version`	Print version information

Servers

Command	What it does
`serve`	Serve the operations over HTTP as NDJSON
`mcp`	Run as an MCP server over stdio

Both expose the same operations as the command line, from the same handlers. Arguments go in the query string under serve, because most of them contain a slash and a path would swallow it:

github serve --addr :7777

curl 'localhost:7777/v1/repo?ref=gohugoio/hugo'
curl 'localhost:7777/v1/blob?ref=gohugoio/hugo&path=go.mod'
curl 'localhost:7777/v1/openapi.json'

CLI