Issue Management Examples
These step-by-step workflows cover issue management end to end: triaging open issues, assigning and labeling them, linking related and blocking issues, tracking milestone progress, holding discussions, and searching across projects. Each example pairs the prompt you type with the exact meta-tool action the server runs, so you can reuse the call directly.
Issue triage
Section titled “Issue triage”The triage loop moves an issue from intake to resolution: view open issues, assign and label them, link related issues, track them in a milestone, and either close them or keep the discussion going. The diagram shows that cycle and where it loops back.
flowchart LR
A[View Open<br/>Issues] --> B[Assign &<br/>Label]
B --> C[Link Related<br/>Issues]
C --> D[Track in<br/>Milestone]
D --> E{Resolved?}
E -->|Yes| F[Close Issue]
E -->|No| G[Add Comment<br/>& Discuss]
G --> B
style A fill:#3b82f6,color:#fff
style F fill:#22c55e,color:#fff
View open issues
Section titled “View open issues”Prompt: “Show me all open issues in the backend project with label ‘bug’”
gitlab_issue → action: list, project_id: "my-group/backend", state: "opened", labels: "bug"Returns: issue titles, authors, labels, milestones, assignees, and creation dates.
Assign and label
Section titled “Assign and label”Prompt: “Assign issue #123 to johndoe and add labels ‘priority::high’ and ‘team::backend‘“
gitlab_issue → action: update, project_id: "my-group/backend", issue_iid: 123, assignee_ids: [45], add_labels: "priority::high,team::backend"Bulk triage by milestone
Section titled “Bulk triage by milestone”Prompt: “Show me all unassigned issues in the Sprint 15 milestone”
gitlab_issue → action: list, project_id: "my-group/backend", milestone: "Sprint 15", assignee_id: 0Returns: issues without assignees that need attention before the sprint starts.
Close resolved issues
Section titled “Close resolved issues”Prompt: “Close issue #456 with a comment explaining the fix”
gitlab_issue → action: note_create, project_id: "my-group/backend", issue_iid: 456, body: "Fixed in MR !89 — the timeout was caused by..."gitlab_issue → action: update, project_id: "my-group/backend", issue_iid: 456, state_event: "close"AI-powered issue analysis
Section titled “AI-powered issue analysis”There is no dedicated “AI analysis” tool. AI-powered analysis happens when the assistant reads issues with gitlab_issue → action: list or action: get, reasons over their content, and then acts on the result — assigning, labeling, linking, or commenting with the actions below. For example, “Find the open bugs in backend, group them by likely root cause, and label the duplicates” chains a read action with the triage actions in this guide, all within one conversation.
Issue linking
Section titled “Issue linking”Model relationships between issues so dependencies are explicit. Mark issues as related, record blocking relationships, and review every link attached to an issue.
Create related issues
Section titled “Create related issues”Prompt: “Link issue #100 as related to issue #200 in the backend project”
gitlab_issue → action: link_create, project_id: "my-group/backend", issue_iid: 100, target_issue_iid: 200, link_type: "relates_to"Create blocking relationships
Section titled “Create blocking relationships”Prompt: “Mark issue #300 as blocking issue #400”
gitlab_issue → action: link_create, project_id: "my-group/backend", issue_iid: 300, target_issue_iid: 400, link_type: "blocks"View issue links
Section titled “View issue links”Prompt: “Show me all issues related to issue #100”
gitlab_issue → action: link_list, project_id: "my-group/backend", issue_iid: 100Returns: linked issues with relationship types (relates_to, blocks, is_blocked_by).
Labels and milestones
Section titled “Labels and milestones”Organize and measure work with labels and milestones. Create scoped labels to categorize issues, and check a milestone’s progress to see how close a sprint is to completion.
Organize with labels
Section titled “Organize with labels”Prompt: “Create a scoped label ‘priority::critical’ with red color in the backend project”
gitlab_label → action: create, project_id: "my-group/backend", name: "priority::critical", color: "#CC0000"Track milestone progress
Section titled “Track milestone progress”Prompt: “Show me the progress of milestone Sprint 15”
gitlab_milestone → action: get, project_id: "my-group/backend", milestone_id: 15Returns: completion percentage, open/closed issue counts, start date, due date, and remaining days.
Issue discussions
Section titled “Issue discussions”Keep the conversation on the issue itself. Add a quick comment, open a threaded discussion for a deeper topic, or react with award emoji to acknowledge updates without adding noise.
Add a comment
Section titled “Add a comment”Prompt: “Comment on issue #123: ‘Reproduced on staging — the error only occurs with concurrent requests‘“
gitlab_issue → action: note_create, project_id: "my-group/backend", issue_iid: 123, body: "Reproduced on staging — the error only occurs with concurrent requests"Start a threaded discussion
Section titled “Start a threaded discussion”Prompt: “Create a discussion thread on issue #123 about the proposed architecture”
gitlab_issue → action: discussion_create, project_id: "my-group/backend", issue_iid: 123, body: "Let's discuss the proposed architecture for this feature..."Award emoji reactions
Section titled “Award emoji reactions”Prompt: “Add a thumbs-up reaction to issue #123”
gitlab_issue → action: award_emoji_create, project_id: "my-group/backend", issue_iid: 123, name: "thumbsup"Search across projects
Section titled “Search across projects”Find issues beyond a single project. Search globally by keyword across every project you can access, or scope the search to one group to surface issues by label.
Find issues by keyword
Section titled “Find issues by keyword”Prompt: “Search for issues mentioning ‘memory leak’ across all my projects”
gitlab_search → scope: "issues", search: "memory leak"Returns: matching issues across all accessible projects with titles, descriptions, and project paths.
Search within a group
Section titled “Search within a group”Prompt: “Find all open issues with label ‘security’ in the platform group”
gitlab_issue → action: list, group_id: "platform", state: "opened", labels: "security"Returns: security-related issues across all projects in the group.