GitHub plugin skills require gh for capabilities now exposed by the App connector
What issue are you seeing?
The curated GitHub plugin's specialist skills direct agents to bypass the GitHub App connector for GitHub Actions logs and PR review-thread state, even though the connector currently exposes those capabilities.
This produces unnecessary dependence on a separately installed and authenticated gh CLI, and can cause agents to claim that the connector cannot perform operations it now supports.
Affected plugin
Installed plugin:
github@openai-curated
The loaded package path in this environment was:
~/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-curated-remote/github/0.1.8-2841cf9749ae/
The current local curated marketplace snapshot contained identical skill instructions, so clearing the versioned cache would reinstall the same content.
Stale instructions
skills/gh-fix-ci/SKILL.md says:
- "Use
ghfor GitHub Actions checks and logs because the connector does not expose that workflow end to end." - "Do not imply that the GitHub app can replace
ghfor Actions log retrieval."
skills/gh-address-comments/SKILL.md says:
- Treat thread-aware review data as a
gh api graphqlproblem because the connector comment surface is flat. - Use the bundled GraphQL script when unresolved review threads, inline locations, or resolution state matter.
The umbrella skills/github/SKILL.md repeats that Actions logs remain a gh workflow.
Current connector capabilities observed
The GitHub App connector exposed structured tools for:
- Fetching commit workflow runs
- Fetching workflow jobs and job steps
- Fetching workflow job logs
- Fetching workflow artifacts
- Reading combined commit status
- Rerunning failed workflow runs and individual jobs
- Listing PR review threads
- Reading thread resolution state
- Resolving and unresolving review threads
- Reading and replying to inline review comments
This means the specialist instructions no longer match the callable connector surface.
Steps to reproduce
- Install and enable
github@openai-curated. - Start a session where the GitHub App connector exposes Actions-log and review-thread tools.
- Ask Codex to debug failing GitHub Actions checks or address unresolved PR review threads.
- Observe that the applicable skill instructs the agent to use the local
ghCLI instead of the available connector. - Inspect the exposed connector tools and confirm the required operations are present.
Expected behavior
The skills should prefer the GitHub App connector whenever its current tool inventory covers the operation.
Use gh only as a fallback when:
- a required operation is genuinely missing,
- arbitrary GraphQL or API querying is needed,
- local branch/checkout context requires it, or
- connector execution fails for a connector-specific reason.
Ideally, skill routing should be capability-aware rather than preserving hard-coded assumptions about an older connector surface.
Additional information
The supported marketplace refresh command could not update this marketplace because openai-curated is a locally managed snapshot rather than a configured Git marketplace:
Error: marketplace `openai-curated` is not configured as a Git marketplace
No matching existing issue was found for the specific GitHub skill/connector capability mismatch.
3 Comments
Confirmed current impact with GitHub plugin
github@0.1.8-2841cf9749ae: its skill still routed GitHub Actions work togh, despite connector exposing workflow-run/status/job/log tools. With staleghauth, this caused needless CLI/browser fallback even though native connector could perform required read operations.I prepared and tested a focused patch for the review-thread portion of this issue.
The change makes the skill discover tools first, prefer
github_list_pull_request_review_threads, gate connector write operations on explicit user authorization, and retain the bundledgh api graphqlscript as fallback. The focused contract test passes and the modified skill validator passes.I could not open a PR from this account/integration: GraphQL returned a create-pull-request permission error, REST returned 404, and the GitHub App returned
Resource not accessible by integration. The fork branch and commit remain available at the links above.Follow-up: the logged-in GitHub compare UI confirms that repository owners have disabled opening pull requests for openai/plugins. Please use the linked fork commit/compare as the patch source for the review-thread portion: https://github.com/jeonking80/plugins/commit/7e58dfcf1e8e04c7ee5c94bb756ea04ca392548f