GitHub CLI

GitHub CLI at a glance

GitHub CLI (gh) is GitHub's official command-line tool for working with repositories, pull requests, issues and actions from the terminal — common on developer and CI machines. GitHub ships frequent releases plus security fixes.

For admins gh authenticates with your GitHub account and stores a token, so the attention point is credential handling: protect the stored token, use least-privilege scopes, and be deliberate about using gh in CI (prefer short-lived, scoped tokens over personal ones). Keep it current for security and API-compatibility fixes; package managers (winget, apt, brew) and the built-in notice handle updates. gh extensions run with its privileges — vet them. After updating, verify that authentication and common commands work. On shared or CI systems, avoid leaving long-lived tokens in gh's config. Track releases; patchletter surfaces new GitHub CLI versions so security fixes land.