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Issue Management Examples

Step-by-step examples for issue management and project triage workflows. Each example shows the natural language prompt and the meta-tool actions the server performs.

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

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.

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"

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: 0

Returns: issues without assignees that need attention before the sprint starts.

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"

Prompt: “Summarize issue #234 and all its comments”

gitlab_summarize_issue (sampling) → reads issue description and all notes, produces summary

Returns: problem statement, key discussion points, proposed solutions, current status, and blockers.

Prompt: “Identify technical debt across the backend project issues”

gitlab_find_technical_debt (sampling) → analyzes issue patterns, labels, and staleness

Returns: categorized debt items (code quality, testing gaps, infrastructure, documentation) with severity ratings.


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"

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"

Prompt: “Show me all issues related to issue #100”

gitlab_issue → action: link_list, project_id: "my-group/backend", issue_iid: 100

Returns: linked issues with relationship types (relates_to, blocks, is_blocked_by).


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"

Prompt: “Show me the progress of milestone Sprint 15”

gitlab_milestone → action: get, project_id: "my-group/backend", milestone_id: 15

Returns: completion percentage, open/closed issue counts, start date, due date, and remaining days.

Prompt: “Generate a detailed report for the Q2 milestone”

gitlab_generate_milestone_report (sampling) → analyzes milestone issues, MRs, and velocity

Returns: executive summary, completion metrics, velocity trends, risk items, and projected completion date.


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"

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..."

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"

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.

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.