Improve issue-triage skill: Add gh CLI checks and fix workflow

[PureWeen]

Description

Improves the issue-triage skill to prevent common workflow mistakes and ensure proper usage of GitHub CLI.

Changes

1. Prerequisites and Validation

• Added GitHub CLI (gh) prerequisite checks to both scripts
• Scripts now exit gracefully with installation instructions if gh is not found
• Updated SKILL.md with Prerequisites section and installation guide for all platforms

2. Milestone Logic Fixes

• Fixed init-triage-session.ps1 to use Invoke-RestMethod for fetching milestones (doesn't require gh)
• Added documentation: milestone names must come from session output, not assumptions
• Included examples of correct vs incorrect milestone suggestions

3. Workflow Documentation

• Added critical rule: ALWAYS use skill scripts, never ad-hoc GitHub API queries
• Documented Step 6: Automatically reload issue batches when empty (don't prompt user)
• Added Common Mistakes section with anti-patterns table
• Explained what each script does and why to use them

4. Testing

• ✅ Verified init-triage-session.ps1 works with gh installed
• ✅ Verified query-issues.ps1 applies proper exclusion filters
• ✅ Confirmed prerequisite check catches missing gh CLI

Why These Changes

During a triage session, the agent bypassed the skill's scripts and used ad-hoc GitHub queries, which missed important exclusion filters (s/needs-info, s/needs-repro, area-blazor, etc.). This resulted in incorrect issue counts and suggestions.

Additionally, the agent assumed milestone names like "SR2" and "SR3" without checking what milestones actually exist, leading to invalid suggestions.

These changes ensure future agents (and users) follow the proper workflow and use accurate data.

Version Bump

• Version: 2.2 → 2.3

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR improves the issue-triage skill by adding prerequisite validation for GitHub CLI and enhancing workflow documentation to prevent common mistakes during issue triage sessions.

Changes:

• Added GitHub CLI (gh) prerequisite checks with installation instructions to both init-triage-session.ps1 and query-issues.ps1
• Updated init-triage-session.ps1 to use Invoke-RestMethod instead of gh api for fetching milestones
• Enhanced SKILL.md with comprehensive documentation including prerequisites section, critical workflow rules, milestone naming guidance, and common mistakes table
• Bumped skill version from 2.2 to 2.3

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

File	Description
.github/skills/issue-triage/scripts/query-issues.ps1	Added prerequisite check for GitHub CLI with graceful exit and installation instructions
.github/skills/issue-triage/scripts/init-triage-session.ps1	Added prerequisite check and migrated milestone fetching from gh api to Invoke-RestMethod
.github/skills/issue-triage/SKILL.md	Added prerequisites section, critical workflow rules, enhanced milestone documentation, and common mistakes table

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

.github/skills/issue-triage/scripts/init-triage-session.ps1:96

• The milestone fetching now uses Invoke-RestMethod without authentication, which will hit GitHub's rate limit for unauthenticated requests (60 requests per hour per IP). For a collaborative environment or CI scenarios, this could cause failures. Consider adding authentication headers using a GitHub token from environment variables (e.g., $env:GITHUB_TOKEN) or falling back to authenticated gh api calls when available to get the higher rate limit of 5000 requests per hour.

try {
    $msData = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://api.github.com/repos/dotnet/maui/milestones?state=open&per_page=100"
    
    foreach ($ms in $msData) {
        $milestones += [PSCustomObject]@{
            Number = $ms.number
            Title = $ms.title
            DueOn = $ms.due_on
            OpenIssues = $ms.open_issues
        }
    }

[Copilot]

The prerequisite check validates that gh CLI is installed, but it only reports success without verifying authentication status. After the check passes, the script still uses gh api at line 153 to fetch labels, which will fail if the user hasn't authenticated with gh auth login. Consider adding an authentication check (e.g., gh auth status) or catching the authentication error at line 153 with a more specific error message directing users to run gh auth login.

Suggested change

	# Verify GitHub CLI authentication
	try {
	# gh auth status will throw if not authenticated or if there is a problem with the auth setup
	gh auth status 1>$null 2>$null
	Write-Host " ✅ GitHub CLI authentication verified" -ForegroundColor Green
	} catch {
	Write-Host ""
	Write-Host " ❌ GitHub CLI (gh) is not authenticated" -ForegroundColor Red
	Write-Host ""
	Write-Host " The issue-triage skill requires an authenticated GitHub CLI session" -ForegroundColor Yellow
	Write-Host " to query milestones, labels, and issues via the GitHub API." -ForegroundColor Yellow
	Write-Host ""
	Write-Host " Please authenticate with:" -ForegroundColor Cyan
	Write-Host " gh auth login" -ForegroundColor White
	Write-Host ""
	exit 1
	}

[Copilot]

Similar to init-triage-session.ps1, this prerequisite check validates that gh CLI is installed but doesn't verify authentication status. The script uses gh commands later (lines 150, 229, 348) which will fail if the user hasn't authenticated. Consider adding an authentication check (e.g., gh auth status) or providing more specific error messages when gh commands fail due to missing authentication.

Suggested change

	# Verify GitHub CLI authentication status
	& gh auth status 1>$null 2>$null
	if ($LASTEXITCODE -ne 0) {
	Write-Host ""
	Write-Host "❌ GitHub CLI (gh) is not authenticated" -ForegroundColor Red
	Write-Host ""
	Write-Host "The issue-triage skill requires an authenticated GitHub CLI session to query issues." -ForegroundColor Yellow
	Write-Host ""
	Write-Host "Please authenticate by running:" -ForegroundColor Cyan
	Write-Host " gh auth login" -ForegroundColor White
	Write-Host ""
	exit 1
	}