Linear Cli

Automate and integrate Linear CLI project management into your development workflows

Category: productivity Source: schpet/linear-cli

Linear Cli is an AI skill that automates project management tasks through the Linear command line interface, enabling issue creation, status updates, cycle management, and workflow automation without leaving the terminal. It covers issue operations, label management, project filtering, bulk updates, and integration with development workflows through shell scripts and CI pipelines.

What Is This?

Overview

Linear Cli provides terminal based workflows for managing Linear project management tasks. It handles creating and updating issues with titles, descriptions, priorities, and assignees, filtering and searching issues by project, team, status, and label, managing cycles and project milestones from the command line, performing bulk operations on multiple issues simultaneously, integrating issue management into Git hooks and CI/CD pipelines, and generating reports on team velocity and issue distribution.

Who Should Use This

This skill serves developers who prefer terminal workflows over web interfaces for issue tracking, engineering teams automating issue management as part of their Git workflow, technical leads generating team status reports from the command line, and DevOps engineers integrating Linear updates into deployment pipelines.

Why Use It?

Problems It Solves

Switching between code editor and browser based project management breaks development flow. Manual issue status updates lag behind actual progress, creating stale boards. Repetitive issue creation for sprint planning involves tedious form filling. Generating team metrics requires navigating multiple views and manually aggregating data.

Core Highlights

Terminal integration keeps developers in their coding environment while managing issues. Script automation enables bulk operations that would require many clicks in the web interface. Git integration updates issue status automatically when branches are created or merged. Pipeline hooks attach deployment information to related Linear issues.

How to Use It?

Basic Usage

npm install -g @linear/cli
linear auth

linear issue create   --title "Add user profile avatar upload"   --description "Allow users to upload and crop profile images"   --team "Frontend"   --priority "high"   --label "feature"   --assignee "jane@company.com"

linear issue list --mine --status "In Progress"

linear issue update FE-142 --status "In Review"

linear issue search "authentication" --team "Backend"

linear issue view FE-142

linear issue comment FE-142   "Implemented the upload endpoint. PR #234 ready for review."

Real-World Examples

#!/bin/bash
BRANCH=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)
ISSUE_ID=$(echo "$BRANCH" | grep -oP '[A-Z]+-\d+')

if [ -z "$ISSUE_ID" ]; then
  exit 0
fi

case "$1" in
  "checkout")
    linear issue update "$ISSUE_ID"       --status "In Progress"
    echo "Linear: $ISSUE_ID marked In Progress"
    ;;
  "merge")
    linear issue update "$ISSUE_ID"       --status "Done"
    COMMIT=$(git log -1 --format="%h %s")
    linear issue comment "$ISSUE_ID"       "Merged: $COMMIT"
    echo "Linear: $ISSUE_ID marked Done"
    ;;
  "report")
    echo "=== Sprint Status ==="
    for status in "Todo" "In Progress" "In Review" "Done"; do
      COUNT=$(linear issue list         --team "$TEAM"         --status "$status"         --cycle current         --format count 2>/dev/null)
      echo "$status: $COUNT"
    done
    ;;
esac

Advanced Tips

Create shell aliases for frequent Linear commands like alias li='linear issue list --mine' for quick access. Use JSON output format with --format json to pipe Linear data into jq for custom reporting. Set up a post-merge Git hook that automatically moves issues to Done when feature branches merge into main.

When to Use It?

Use Cases

Use Linear Cli when managing issues as part of a terminal based development workflow, when automating sprint planning by creating issues from templates or backlogs, when integrating issue status updates with Git branch and merge events, or when generating team velocity reports for standup meetings.

Important Notes

Requirements

Node.js runtime for installing the Linear CLI package. A Linear account with API access and appropriate team permissions. Authentication token configured through the CLI setup process.

Usage Recommendations

Do: name Git branches with the Linear issue identifier so automation scripts can extract it reliably. Use the --format json flag when building scripts that parse Linear output programmatically. Test automation scripts with dry run flags before enabling automatic issue status changes.

Don't: create duplicate issues by running creation scripts without checking for existing matches first. Automate status transitions that bypass team workflow agreements without discussion. Store Linear API tokens in scripts or repositories, using environment variables or credential managers instead.

Limitations

The CLI may not support every feature available in the Linear web interface. Bulk operations are subject to API rate limits that throttle rapid sequential updates. Offline usage is not possible, as every command requires API connectivity.