99problems

AI-friendly access to GitHub issues.

Fetch GitHub issue conversations as structured JSON or YAML — ready for LLM pipelines, RAG, and bulk analysis. Uses the same search syntax as the GitHub web UI.

Installation

npm install -g @mbe24/99problems

Or via cargo:

cargo install problems99

Pre-built binaries are available for Windows x64, Linux x64, Linux ARM64, macOS Intel, and macOS Apple Silicon. No runtime dependencies.

Usage

# Fetch all closed issues mentioning "Event" from a repo
99problems -q "is:issue state:closed Event repo:schemaorg/schemaorg" -o output.json

# Fetch a single issue
99problems --repo schemaorg/schemaorg --issue 1842

# YAML output
99problems -q "state:open label:bug repo:owner/repo" --format yaml

# Pipe into jq
99problems -q "state:closed repo:owner/repo" | jq '.[].title'

Output

Each result is a conversation object with the issue body and all comments:

[
  {
    "id": 1842,
    "title": "Event schema improvements",
    "body": "Issue body text...",
    "url": "https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/1842",
    "state": "closed",
    "created_at": "2019-04-01T12:00:00Z",
    "comments": [
      {
        "author": "octocat",
        "body": "Comment text...",
        "created_at": "2019-04-02T08:00:00Z"
      }
    ]
  }
]

Configuration

99problems reads TOML dotfiles so you don't have to repeat flags on every run.

Example ~/.99problems:

token = "ghp_your_personal_access_token"

Example ./.99problems in a project directory:

repo  = "owner/my-repo"
state = "closed"

Token is resolved in this order: --token flag → GITHUB_TOKEN env var → ./.99problems → ~/.99problems. Without a token the GitHub API rate limit is 60 requests/hour; with one it's 5,000/hour.

Options

Options:
  -q, --query <QUERY>      Full GitHub search query (web UI syntax)
      --repo <REPO>        Shorthand for "repo:owner/name"
      --state <STATE>      Shorthand for "state:open|closed"
      --labels <LABELS>    Comma-separated labels, e.g. "bug,help wanted"
      --issue <ISSUE>      Fetch a single issue by number (requires --repo)
      --source <SOURCE>    Data source [default: github-issues]
      --format <FORMAT>    Output format: json | yaml [default: json]
  -o, --output <FILE>      Write to file instead of stdout
      --token <TOKEN>      GitHub personal access token
  -h, --help               Print help
  -V, --version            Print version

Use cases

• LLM context / RAG — load issue history into a vector store or prompt
• Issue triage — process closed issues in bulk with Python or JavaScript
• Dataset generation — build labelled datasets from GitHub discussions
• Changelog automation — extract closed issues for release notes

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

See LICENSE.