Gathering Branch Context

Quickly gather all context for a branch to start working from a known point. Combines Linear issue details, GitHub PR information, and Buildkite build status.

Prerequisites

•linctl CLI installed and authenticated (linctl auth)
•GitHub CLI (gh) installed and authenticated (gh auth status)
•Buildkite CLI (bk) installed and configured (bk configure)

Workflow

1. Determine the Branch

Use the current branch or ask the user:

bash

git branch --show-current

2. Extract Linear Issue ID

Parse the branch name for a Linear issue ID (e.g., ABC-123 or abc-123):

bash

# Common patterns: feature/ABC-123-description, abc-123/description, ABC-123-description
# Use -i for case-insensitive matching, then uppercase for linctl
git branch --show-current | grep -oiE '[a-z]+-[0-9]+' | head -1 | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'

3. Fetch Linear Issue Details

If an issue ID is found:

bash

linctl issue get ABC-123 --json | jq '{
  identifier,
  title,
  description,
  priority: .priorityLabel,
  status: .state.name,
  assignee: .assignee.name,
  url,
  project: .project.name
}'

4. Find and Read Pull Request

bash

# Find PRs for the branch
gh pr list --head <branch-name> --state all

# If PR exists, get details with jq filtering (include body for full context)
gh pr view <pr-number> --json number,title,body,state,reviewDecision,mergedAt,url,reviews | jq '{
  number,
  title,
  body,
  state,
  reviewDecision,
  mergedAt,
  url,
  reviews: [.reviews[] | {author: .author.login, state}]
}'

5. Get Build Status

bash

# Get build summary for the branch (adjust org/pipeline as needed)
bk build view -p buildkite/buildkite -b <branch-name> -o json | jq '{number, state, branch, web_url, jobs_summary: (.jobs | group_by(.state) | map({(.[0].state): length}) | add)}'

If the build has failures, list failed jobs:

bash

bk build view -p buildkite/buildkite -b <branch-name> -o json | jq '.jobs[] | select(.state == "failed" or .state == "timed_out") | {id, name, web_url}'

Output Summary

Present a consolidated summary:

•Linear Issue: Title, status, description, acceptance criteria
•Pull Request: Title, description/body, status, review decision, open comments
•Build Status: State (passed/failed/running), failed job count, link

Example

For branch feature/ENG-456-add-user-auth:

code

## Branch Context: feature/ENG-456-add-user-auth

### Linear Issue: ENG-456
- **Title**: Add user authentication
- **Status**: In Progress
- **Description**: Implement JWT-based auth...

### Pull Request: #1234
- **Title**: Add user authentication
- **Status**: Open
- **Reviews**: Approved (2/2)
- **Comments**: 3 unresolved
- **Description**: Implements JWT-based authentication...

### Build: #5678
- **Status**: Failed
- **Failed Jobs**: 2 (rspec, eslint)
- **URL**: https://buildkite.com/...