OpenClaw GitHub Skill: Automate Your Dev Workflow

Developers who connect OpenClaw to GitHub unlock a powerful automation layer across their entire development workflow. The OpenClaw GitHub skill lets your agent read repositories, create and close issues, review pull requests, trigger workflows, and summarise activity — all from a natural language interface.

What the GitHub Skill Does

• Repository overview: get stats, recent commits, open issues, and PR status
• Issue management: create, update, close, and query issues with filtering
• Pull request review: read PR diffs, add review comments, approve or request changes
• Code search: search across repos for specific patterns or files
• Workflow triggers: trigger GitHub Actions workflows manually
• Notifications: fetch your GitHub notification feed and mark as read
• Release management: create releases, view changelogs, compare tags

Setup

Create a GitHub Personal Access Token

1. Go to GitHub Settings > Developer Settings > Personal Access Tokens > Fine-Grained Tokens
2. Create a new token with only the permissions you need:
   • repo scope for private repository access
   • issues: read/write for issue management
   • pull_requests: read/write for PR operations
   • actions: read/write if you need workflow triggers
3. Set an expiry (90 days recommended for rotation hygiene)

Install the Skill

/skills install github-connector
# Paste your Personal Access Token when prompted

Practical Workflows

Morning dev standup: "Summarise all open PRs waiting for my review across all my repos."

Issue creation from a conversation: "Create a GitHub issue in nacre/frontend titled 'Mobile nav menu doesn't close on link click'. Label it bug, assign to @sarah."

PR review assistance: "Summarise the changes in PR #47 in the nacre/backend repo. What files changed and what's the stated purpose?"

Release notes drafting: "List all merged PRs in nacre/backend since the v1.2.0 tag and draft release notes."

Activity monitoring: "What happened in the nacre organisation's repositories yesterday?"

Security Best Practices

Use fine-grained tokens scoped to only the specific repositories you need. Do not use a classic repo-scoped token that grants access to all your repositories unless absolutely necessary. Rotate tokens every 90 days.

On nacre.sh, your GitHub token is stored in encrypted form within your isolated instance. It is never logged or transmitted to nacre.sh systems.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can OpenClaw write code and push it to GitHub?

With the Code Runner skill installed alongside the GitHub skill, OpenClaw can write code, test it locally, and open a PR with the changes. This is an advanced workflow that requires careful permission management.

Does it work with GitHub Enterprise?

Yes. When configuring the skill, specify your GitHub Enterprise base URL alongside your token.