GitHub Issues
Ranked 4 of 9 issue trackers by recommenders
Recommended for quick, CLI-friendly tracking tied to code, milestones and pull requests. Common caveat: fewer workflow features than Jira.
Recommended for quick, CLI-friendly tracking tied to code, milestones and pull requests. Common caveat: fewer workflow features than Jira.
57 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 29
- criticize it
- 28
- approval share
- 51%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 29 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Easy to query from the CLI
“They are easily queryable/filterable from the cli, can be attached to milestones, and automatically closed by attaching a PR to it.”
Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Tasks as Code: Move Your Tickets into the Repository” “I've had success with just using gh issues and agents are pretty good at looking for new issues and closing them when done.”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Beads – A memory upgrade for your coding agent” “I'm using GitHub issues and GitHub Projects with `gh` cli and I find it works well”
Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Paca – Lightweight Jira alternative for human-AI collaboration” - Comment from 6 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: I replaced beads with a faster, simpler Markdown-based task tracker”
- Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Why users cannot create Issues directly (Ghostty)”
Lives with code, no extra tools
“They work great for this. You can copy and paste code, images and references to code in repos to them”
Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “Using an Engineering Notebook” “Removing the friction of opening a browser actually changed how consistently I maintain my list.”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Is anyone actually using OpenClaw?” “But it's better than spinning up an ephemeral web site, or hooking into Slack or Telegram”
Comment from 31 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: What should the GUI for AI agents look like?” - Comment from 12 Mar 2026 in “Atlassian CEO: AI doesn't replace people here, but we're firing them anyway”
Works as an agent task board
“I've had success with just using gh issues and agents are pretty good at looking for new issues and closing them when done.”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Beads – A memory upgrade for your coding agent” “Gh issues works surprisingly well as an agent board. Labels for state, one issue per feature.”
Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Paca – Lightweight Jira alternative for human-AI collaboration” “A major benefit of this is that agents can look up prior prompt instructions as needed”
Comment from 22 Sep 2026 in “Markdown in /src” - Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “The Code-Only Agent”
Fine for small projects
“I personally, use GH Issues for my own work, but there's hardly any, so it's not a burden.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Why users cannot create Issues directly (Ghostty)” “it totally works for my N<10 users”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “Ask HN: How do you host your vibe coded tools/sites?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Lacks triage and separate lists
“It all stems from the fact that all issues are in this one large pool rather than there being a completely separate list”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Why users cannot create Issues directly (Ghostty)” “github issues is crap. Most bug trackers have ways to triage submissions.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Why users cannot create Issues directly (Ghostty)” “Creating an issue for things that aren't issues is fundamentally broken.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Why users cannot create Issues directly (Ghostty)” - Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Why users cannot create Issues directly (Ghostty)”
Fewer features than Jira
“If GitHub had the same level of integration that other ticket systems achieve with their automation”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Why users cannot create Issues directly (Ghostty)” “GitHub issues doesn't let you do all the arcane nonsense Azure DevOps' boards let you do.”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Another GitHub outage in the same day” “i often whish gh issues had more of the features jira has”
Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Paca – Lightweight Jira alternative for human-AI collaboration” Vendor lock-in and outages
“vendor lockin + slow network calls (+ GitHub is down sometimes)”
Comment from 6 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: I replaced beads with a faster, simpler Markdown-based task tracker” “been getting nothing but trouble the last few weeks from having github manage the project/issues”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “GitHub Is Down”
Other issue trackers people recommend
The four most recommended other issue trackers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 9 issue trackers, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 62 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“They are easily queryable/filterable from the cli, can be attached to milestones, and automatically closed by attaching a PR to it.”
“Github issues require too much cross-communication and not everyone has the time to meta-coordinate many different issues”
“A major benefit of this is that agents can look up prior prompt instructions as needed”
“the count of open issues is still one higher than the actual number (until I reload the page)”
“it totally works for my N<10 users”
“But it's better than spinning up an ephemeral web site, or hooking into Slack or Telegram”
“Gh issues works surprisingly well as an agent board. Labels for state, one issue per feature.”
“i often whish gh issues had more of the features jira has”
“I'm using GitHub issues and GitHub Projects with `gh` cli and I find it works well”
“Now I just use Github issues instead.”
“GitHub issues probably isn't sophisticated enough for you anyway”
“been getting nothing but trouble the last few weeks from having github manage the project/issues”
“Removing the friction of opening a browser actually changed how consistently I maintain my list.”
“I really with they'd move over to github tickets”
“With issues, the context is a bit more "detached", and I found myself not going back to it often.”
“GitHub issues templates are perfect for ADR templates”
“This saved money and also a lot of hassle in trying to keep the two in sync”
“doesnt seem to be 100% foolproof yet”
“They work great for this.”
“They work great for this. You can copy and paste code, images and references to code in repos to them”
“GitHub issues doesn't let you do all the arcane nonsense Azure DevOps' boards let you do.”
“I just use beads or Github issues.”
“The task list approach (JSONL, GH issues) works well for what to do next.”
“Or you can use something like Linear / GH Issues to track the big items.”
“it's really not quite the same”
“vendor lockin + slow network calls (+ GitHub is down sometimes)”
“easy to tell them so and give them access to suitable gh commands”
“If GitHub had the same level of integration that other ticket systems achieve with their automation”
“All of this is possible on GitHub issues and is in fact done by many projects”
“Creating an issue for things that aren't issues is fundamentally broken.”
“This is completely a failure of GitHub's product suite and as I noted in another comment I'm not happy I have to do this.”
“I've found GitHub issues to be very usable.”
“It looks great. As mentally easy to process as Jira tasks.”
“behold the best way to search github issues”
“It all stems from the fact that all issues are in this one large pool rather than there being a completely separate list”
“I personally, use GH Issues for my own work, but there's hardly any, so it's not a burden.”
“github issues is crap. Most bug trackers have ways to triage submissions.”
“This highlights GitHub's issue management system being inadequate.”
“github tasks or beads[0] both work pretty well”
“I've had success with just using gh issues and agents are pretty good at looking for new issues and closing them when done.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.