github-auth: GitHub for Claude Code | AI Skill Market | AI Skill Market

AI Skill Market Insights

Real data. Real impact.

Popularity

Rising

Emerging

Active Users

Developers

Time Saved

2+ hrs

Per week

Quality

4/5

Excellent

Be Part of the 0+ Developer Community

Skills give you superpowers. Install in 30 seconds.

GitHub Authentication Setup

This skill sets up authentication so the agent can work with GitHub repositories, PRs, issues, and CI. It covers two paths:

git
(always available) — uses HTTPS personal access tokens or SSH keys
gh
CLI (if installed) — richer GitHub API access with a simpler auth flow

Detection Flow

When a user asks you to work with GitHub, run this check first:

# Check what's available
git --version
gh --version 2>/dev/null || echo "gh not installed"

# Check if already authenticated
gh auth status 2>/dev/null || echo "gh not authenticated"
git config --global credential.helper 2>/dev/null || echo "no git credential helper"

Decision tree:

If
```
gh auth status
```
shows authenticated → you're good, use
```
gh
```
for everything
If
```
gh
```
is installed but not authenticated → use "gh auth" method below
If
```
gh
```
is not installed → use "git-only" method below (no sudo needed)

Method 1: Git-Only Authentication (No gh, No sudo)

This works on any machine with

git

installed. No root access needed.

Option A: HTTPS with Personal Access Token (Recommended)

This is the most portable method — works everywhere, no SSH config needed.

Step 1: Create a personal access token

Tell the user to go to: https://github.com/settings/tokens

Click "Generate new token (classic)"
Give it a name like "hermes-agent"
Select scopes:
- ```
repo
```
  (full repository access — read, write, push, PRs)
- ```
workflow
```
  (trigger and manage GitHub Actions)
- ```
read:org
```
  (if working with organization repos)
Set expiration (90 days is a good default)
Copy the token — it won't be shown again

Step 2: Configure git to store the token

# Set up the credential helper to cache credentials
# "store" saves to ~/.git-credentials in plaintext (simple, persistent)
git config --global credential.helper store

# Now do a test operation that triggers auth — git will prompt for credentials
# Username: <their-github-username>
# Password: <paste the personal access token, NOT their GitHub password>
git ls-remote https://github.com/<their-username>/<any-repo>.git

After entering credentials once, they're saved and reused for all future operations.

Alternative: cache helper (credentials expire from memory)

# Cache in memory for 8 hours (28800 seconds) instead of saving to disk
git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout=28800'

Alternative: set the token directly in the remote URL (per-repo)

# Embed token in the remote URL (avoids credential prompts entirely)
git remote set-url origin https://<username>:<token>@github.com/<owner>/<repo>.git

Step 3: Configure git identity

# Required for commits — set name and email
git config --global user.name "Their Name"
git config --global user.email "their-email@example.com"

Step 4: Verify

# Test push access (this should work without any prompts now)
git ls-remote https://github.com/<their-username>/<any-repo>.git

# Verify identity
git config --global user.name
git config --global user.email

Option B: SSH Key Authentication

Good for users who prefer SSH or already have keys set up.

Step 1: Check for existing SSH keys

ls -la ~/.ssh/id_*.pub 2>/dev/null || echo "No SSH keys found"

Step 2: Generate a key if needed

# Generate an ed25519 key (modern, secure, fast)
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "their-email@example.com" -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 -N ""

# Display the public key for them to add to GitHub
cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

Tell the user to add the public key at: https://github.com/settings/keys

Click "New SSH key"
Paste the public key content
Give it a title like "hermes-agent-"

Step 3: Test the connection

ssh -T git@github.com
# Expected: "Hi <username>! You've successfully authenticated..."

Step 4: Configure git to use SSH for GitHub

# Rewrite HTTPS GitHub URLs to SSH automatically
git config --global url."git@github.com:".insteadOf "https://github.com/"

Step 5: Configure git identity

git config --global user.name "Their Name"
git config --global user.email "their-email@example.com"

Method 2: gh CLI Authentication

gh

is installed, it handles both API access and git credentials in one step.

Interactive Browser Login (Desktop)

gh auth login
# Select: GitHub.com
# Select: HTTPS
# Authenticate via browser

Token-Based Login (Headless / SSH Servers)

echo "<THEIR_TOKEN>" | gh auth login --with-token

# Set up git credentials through gh
gh auth setup-git

Verify

gh auth status

Using the GitHub API Without gh

When

gh

is not available, you can still access the full GitHub API using

curl

with a personal access token. This is how the other GitHub skills implement their fallbacks.

Setting the Token for API Calls

# Option 1: Export as env var (preferred — keeps it out of commands)
export GITHUB_TOKEN="<token>"

# Then use in curl calls:
curl -s -H "Authorization: token $GITHUB_TOKEN" \
  https://api.github.com/user

Extracting the Token from Git Credentials

If git credentials are already configured (via credential.helper store), the token can be extracted:

# Read from git credential store
grep "github.com" ~/.git-credentials 2>/dev/null | head -1 | sed 's|https://[^:]*:\([^@]*\)@.*|\1|'

Helper: Detect Auth Method

Use this pattern at the start of any GitHub workflow:

# Try gh first, fall back to git + curl
if command -v gh &>/dev/null && gh auth status &>/dev/null; then
  echo "AUTH_METHOD=gh"
elif [ -n "$GITHUB_TOKEN" ]; then
  echo "AUTH_METHOD=curl"
elif [ -f ~/.hermes/.env ] && grep -q "^GITHUB_TOKEN=" ~/.hermes/.env; then
  export GITHUB_TOKEN=$(grep "^GITHUB_TOKEN=" ~/.hermes/.env | head -1 | cut -d= -f2 | tr -d '\n\r')
  echo "AUTH_METHOD=curl"
elif grep -q "github.com" ~/.git-credentials 2>/dev/null; then
  export GITHUB_TOKEN=$(grep "github.com" ~/.git-credentials | head -1 | sed 's|https://[^:]*:\([^@]*\)@.*|\1|')
  echo "AUTH_METHOD=curl"
else
  echo "AUTH_METHOD=none"
  echo "Need to set up authentication first"
fi

Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
`git push` asks for password	GitHub disabled password auth. Use a personal access token as the password, or switch to SSH
`remote: Permission to X denied`	Token may lack `repo` scope — regenerate with correct scopes
`fatal: Authentication failed`	Cached credentials may be stale — run `git credential reject` then re-authenticate
`ssh: connect to host github.com port 22: Connection refused`	Try SSH over HTTPS port: add `Host github.com` with `Port 443` and `Hostname ssh.github.com` to `~/.ssh/config`
Credentials not persisting	Check `git config --global credential.helper` — must be `store` or `cache`
Multiple GitHub accounts	Use SSH with different keys per host alias in `~/.ssh/config` , or per-repo credential URLs
`gh: command not found` + no sudo	Use git-only Method 1 above — no installation needed

License

MIT

Quick Start

Install Command

mkdir -p ~/.hermes/skills/github/github-auth && curl -o ~/.hermes/skills/github/github-auth/SKILL.md https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/skills/github/github-auth/SKILL.md

github-auth

AI Skill Market Insights

Be Part of the 0+ Developer Community

GitHub Authentication Setup

Detection Flow

Method 1: Git-Only Authentication (No gh, No sudo)

Option A: HTTPS with Personal Access Token (Recommended)

Option B: SSH Key Authentication

Method 2: gh CLI Authentication

Interactive Browser Login (Desktop)

Token-Based Login (Headless / SSH Servers)

Verify

Using the GitHub API Without gh

Setting the Token for API Calls

Extracting the Token from Git Credentials

Helper: Detect Auth Method

Troubleshooting

License

Quick Start

Install Command

TEAR & SHARE

Tags

github-issues

github-repo-management

codebase-inspection

github-code-review

github-pr-workflow

Channels

Learn

Compare

Company