Issues & Project Boards

GitHub Issues is a built-in tracker for bugs, feature requests, and tasks. Combined with GitHub Projects (Kanban boards), it forms a complete lightweight project management system without ever leaving GitHub.

01.Using Issues Effectively

Each issue gets an auto-incremented number (#42). Link commits and PRs to issues by mentioning them: "Closes #42" in a commit or PR description automatically closes the issue on merge. Use Labels to categorize (bug, enhancement, good first issue). Assign issues to team members. Use Milestones to group issues for a release. Write clear reproduction steps for bugs.

Commit Timeline

a1b2c3d

init

b2c3d4e

feat

c3d4e5f

fix

d4e5f6a

HEAD

02.GitHub Projects — Kanban for Teams

GitHub Projects gives you a visual board to organize issues and PRs through stages: Backlog → In Progress → In Review → Done. Issues auto-move when their linked PR is merged. Add custom fields like priority, estimate, and team. Use Milestones to track release progress. This keeps the whole team aligned on what is being worked on.

Distributed Architecture

💻

Your Local

push / pull

☁️

GitHub (Remote)

push / pull

💻

Teammate's Local

Commands

commands — click to reveal output

git commit -m "Fix empty input crash, closes #42"

Commit message auto-closes linked issue on PR merge

git commit -m "Partial progress on #38"

Reference an issue without closing it

gh issue create --title "Login button broken on mobile" --body "Steps: 1. Open on iPhone..."

Create an issue from the CLI

gh issue list

List all open issues

▼ show output

gh issue close 42 --comment "Fixed in #23"

Close an issue with a comment from CLI

KNOWLEDGE CHECK

How do you automatically close a GitHub issue when a PR is merged?

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