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PublishedAugust 20, 2026 at 03:01 AM

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name: github-auth description: "GitHub auth setup: HTTPS tokens, SSH keys, gh CLI login." version: 1.1.0 author: Hermes Agent license: MIT platforms: [linux, macos, windows] metadata: hermes: tags: [GitHub, Authentication, Git, gh-cli, SSH, Setup] related_skills: [github-pr-workflow, github-code-review, github-issues, github-repo-management]

GitHub Authentication Setup

This skill sets up authentication so the agent can work with GitHub repositories, PRs, issues, and CI. It covers two paths:

`git` (always available) — uses HTTPS personal access tokens or SSH keys
`gh` CLI (if installed) — richer GitHub API access with a simpler auth flow

Detection Flow

When a user asks you to work with GitHub, run this check first:

bash

# Check what's available
git --version
gh --version 2>/dev/null || echo "gh not installed"
 
# Check if already authenticated
gh auth status 2>/dev/null || echo "gh not authenticated"
git config --global credential.helper 2>/dev/null || echo "no git credential helper"

Decision tree:

If gh auth status shows authenticated → you're good, use gh for everything
If gh is installed but not authenticated → use "gh auth" method below
If gh is not installed → use "git-only" method below (no sudo needed)

Method 1: Git-Only Authentication (No gh, No sudo)

This works on any machine with git installed. No root access needed.

Option A: HTTPS with Personal Access Token (Recommended)

This is the most portable method — works everywhere, no SSH config needed.

Step 1: Create a personal access token

Tell the user to go to: https://github.com/settings/tokens

Click "Generate new token (classic)"
Give it a name like "hermes-agent"
Select scopes:
repo (full repository access — read, write, push, PRs)
workflow (trigger and manage GitHub Actions)
read:org (if working with organization repos)
Set expiration (90 days is a good default)
Copy the token — it won't be shown again

Step 2: Configure git to store the token

bash

# Set up the credential helper to cache credentials
# "store" saves to ~/.git-credentials in plaintext (simple, persistent)
git config --global credential.helper store
 
# Now do a test operation that triggers auth — git will prompt for credentials
# Username: <their-github-username>
# Password: <paste the personal access token, NOT their GitHub password>
git ls-remote https://github.com/<their-username>/<any-repo>.git

After entering credentials once, they're saved and reused for all future operations.

Alternative: cache helper (credentials expire from memory)

bash

# Cache in memory for 8 hours (28800 seconds) instead of saving to disk
git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout=28800'

Alternative: set the token directly in the remote URL (per-repo)

bash

# Embed token in the remote URL (avoids credential prompts entirely)
git remote set-url origin https://<username>:<token>@github.com/<owner>/<repo>.git

Step 3: Configure git identity

bash

# Required for commits — set name and email
git config --global user.name "Their Name"
git config --global user.email "their-email@example.com"

Step 4: Verify

bash

# Test push access (this should work without any prompts now)
git ls-remote https://github.com/<their-username>/<any-repo>.git
 
# Verify identity
git config --global user.name
git config --global user.email

Option B: SSH Key Authentication

Good for users who prefer SSH or already have keys set up.

Step 1: Check for existing SSH keys

bash

ls -la ~/.ssh/id_*.pub 2>/dev/null || echo "No SSH keys found"

Step 2: Generate a key if needed

bash

# Generate an ed25519 key (modern, secure, fast)
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "their-email@example.com" -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 -N ""
 
# Display the public key for them to add to GitHub
cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

Tell the user to add the public key at: https://github.com/settings/keys

Click "New SSH key"
Paste the public key content
Give it a title like "hermes-agent-<machine-name>"

Step 3: Test the connection

bash

ssh -T git@github.com
# Expected: "Hi <username>! You've successfully authenticated..."

Step 4: Configure git to use SSH for GitHub

bash

# Rewrite HTTPS GitHub URLs to SSH automatically
git config --global url."git@github.com:".insteadOf "https://github.com/"

Step 5: Configure git identity

bash

git config --global user.name "Their Name"
git config --global user.email "their-email@example.com"

Method 2: gh CLI Authentication

If gh is installed, it handles both API access and git credentials in one step.

Interactive Browser Login (Desktop)

bash

gh auth login
# Select: GitHub.com
# Select: HTTPS
# Authenticate via browser

Token-Based Login (Headless / SSH Servers)

bash

echo "<THEIR_TOKEN>" | gh auth login --with-token
 
# Set up git credentials through gh
gh auth setup-git

Verify

bash

gh auth status

Using the GitHub API Without gh

When gh is not available, you can still access the full GitHub API using curl with a personal access token. This is how the other GitHub skills implement their fallbacks.

Setting the Token for API Calls

bash

# Option 1: Export as env var (preferred — keeps it out of commands)
export GITHUB_TOKEN="<token>"
 
# Then use in curl calls:
curl -s -H "Authorization: token $GITHUB_TOKEN" \
  https://api.github.com/user

Extracting the Token from Git Credentials

If git credentials are already configured (via credential.helper store), the token can be extracted:

bash

# Read from git credential store
grep "github.com" ~/.git-credentials 2>/dev/null | head -1 | sed 's|https://[^:]*:\([^@]*\)@.*|\1|'

Helper: Detect Auth Method

Use this pattern at the start of any GitHub workflow:

bash

# Try gh first, fall back to git + curl
if command -v gh &>/dev/null && gh auth status &>/dev/null; then
  echo "AUTH_METHOD=gh"
elif [ -n "$GITHUB_TOKEN" ]; then
  echo "AUTH_METHOD=curl"
elif _hermes_env="${HERMES_HOME:-$HOME/.hermes}/.env"; [ -f "$_hermes_env" ] && grep -q "^GITHUB_TOKEN=" "$_hermes_env"; then
  export GITHUB_TOKEN=$(grep "^GITHUB_TOKEN=" "$_hermes_env" | head -1 | cut -d= -f2 | tr -d '\n\r')
  echo "AUTH_METHOD=curl"
elif grep -q "github.com" ~/.git-credentials 2>/dev/null; then
  export GITHUB_TOKEN=$(grep "github.com" ~/.git-credentials | head -1 | sed 's|https://[^:]*:\([^@]*\)@.*|\1|')
  echo "AUTH_METHOD=curl"
else
  echo "AUTH_METHOD=none"
  echo "Need to set up authentication first"
fi

Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
`git push` asks for password	GitHub disabled password auth. Use a personal access token as the password, or switch to SSH
`remote: Permission to X denied`	Token may lack `repo` scope — regenerate with correct scopes
`fatal: Authentication failed`	Cached credentials may be stale — run `git credential reject` then re-authenticate
`ssh: connect to host github.com port 22: Connection refused`	Try SSH over HTTPS port: add `Host github.com` with `Port 443` and `Hostname ssh.github.com` to `~/.ssh/config`
Credentials not persisting	Check `git config --global credential.helper` — must be `store` or `cache`
Multiple GitHub accounts	Use SSH with different keys per host alias in `~/.ssh/config`, or per-repo credential URLs
`gh: command not found` + no sudo	Use git-only Method 1 above — no installation needed

← v1.0.0 All versions