Slash Commands Public Feedback

[omerbensaadon]

Docs link: https://docs.github.com/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/about-slash-commands

You can disable this Beta feature site-wide via Feature Preview: https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/using-github/exploring-early-access-releases-with-feature-preview#exploring-beta-releases-with-feature-preview

[toy]

First - nice feature!
Noticed unexpected behaviour when trying to interact using completion:

• Type / - see the menu
• Type tab - get Table selected
• Press Enter/Return - see the list with number of columns
• Press 3 - menu disappears

I expected it to select 3 columns and be able to use same completion for rows.

Another nice touch would be if after inserting the table first Header would be selected.

[victor1871]

Chat

[gruvw]

We should have a closer border to the text writing area, we don't have a feel for how big the available area is.

[HiDeoo]

Neat, altho it looks like slash commands are not working (yet?) in issue forms.

[omerbensaadon]

Hey, we're going to look into supporting Issue forms, sit tight!

[MarkBennett]

This is the biggest item holding us back from using the issues forms, as they don't work with slash commands, or in other places where you create the issues without access to the templates (new projects, new task lists, the "Create issue" button for legacy task lists).

It would be great to see those integrate with some of the newer features, as they're a much better flow when collecting issues from a broader community.

Is there a place to specificaly give feedback on the new issue forms?

[nohaaaaa18]

اريد طريقه حل المشكلة

[haydenwhayne]

@omerbensaadon any word on when issue forms will be supported in slash templates?

[AlCalzone]

When I heard about this feature I was hoping GitHub would finally the powerful slash commands from Gitlab. It doesn't look like it though, so IMO this feature falls short of its huge potential. I'm especially missing the following ones:

• /approve / /unapprove - Approves/Unapproves a PR
• /assign <user> - Assign an issue or PR to a user
• /close / /reopen - Close/Reopen an issue/PR
• /draft / /ready - Mark a PR as draft/ready to review
• /label label1 label2 / /unlabel label3 - Add/remove labels to/from an issue
• /target_branch <local branch name> - Change the target branch of a PR

Additional features that could be interesting:

• /automerge - Enable automerging for PRs
• ...

If those commands were supported in saved replies, we could have very powerful automations for things that need to be done on a regular basis and that currently need custom bots etc.

[jlsjonas]

I had the same impression; the beta actually makes the /-command experience worse as you now have a distracting useless pop-up on top 😅

If only...

[BDARmech]

no /close maybe /close

[elanzini]

+ /rebase

[alvaromartmart]

+1 for the ability to add custom slash commands, would enhance the experience with comment-based CI wofklows

[zhoushengdao]

Uh, the colours seem to be wrong when the mouse is hovering over the slash commands button.

[BDARmech]

I switched for personal reasons. If penetrated, I want to feel it. lol. But great feature.

[shadowspawn]

When using /codeblock I can't seem to select the language by typing, as typing abandons the slash command and inserts the character I type. This means I need to scroll through the list using the arrow keys or mouse which is slow.

e.g.

• hit / (Slash commands appears)
• hit c (Slash commands list restricted to Code block)
• hit Enter (Slash / Code block appears)
• hit t hoping to restrict or scroll list and select TypeScript (cancelled, now have text /ct type into issue)

[AnixPasBesoin]

Code here make the same suggestion :)

[anthony-legitfit]

Came here to make the same suggestion for saved replies by typing the start of their titles

[omerbensaadon]

So we have the designs for this, but it sort of turned into an a11y focused overhaul. The overhaul is going to take awhile to work its way up the backlog of all the other things we have going on.

This is top 2 items in the backlog for sure once we get back to this.

[dodexahedron]

When using /codeblock I can't seem to select the language by typing, as typing abandons the slash command and inserts the character I type. This means I need to scroll through the list using the arrow keys or mouse which is slow.

e.g.

• hit / (Slash commands appears)
• hit c (Slash commands list restricted to Code block)
• hit Enter (Slash / Code block appears)
• hit t hoping to restrict or scroll list and select TypeScript (cancelled, now have text /ct type into issue)

I'd argue it's less convenient than just using code fences, as-is.

/codeblock is already 10 keystrokes.

```
```

Is 7 (counting the return)

I'd rather just have code fences auto-complete the end of the fence plus two line breaks so I have open, close, and a blank line to paste my code into.

A pop-up menu for languages with them would be cool too (for fences and slash commands), with prioritized suggestions based on detected repo languages.

[tristdrum]

@dodexahedron I think it's also about discoverability. People might discover the slash command and then figure out that code blocks are ''' because of it!

But I do hear your point!

[HonkingGoose]

Add more syntaxes to /codeblock helper

Can you please add these syntaxes to the /codeblock helper?

• json
• markdown
• yaml

Why I want these syntaxes added?

• I use the json syntax daily for displaying the renovate.json config file in Issues and in the Renovate documentation.
• I use the markdown to show the Markdown code next to my mockups of Markdown based features.
• I use the yaml syntax to work with Material for MkDocs config files.

Split syntaxes into categories

The /codeblock helper probably only shows a sub-set of all valid syntaxes to keep the dropdown small. The /table helper has multiple menus to drill-down to the specific table format. How about splitting syntaxes into categories like: "programming languages" and "configuration file syntax"?

Suggested workflow for user

1. User enters /codeblock.
2. Show menu and let user select the category they want, like "programming languages" or "configuration file syntax".
3. Show the syntaxes related in the selected category in a new menu.
4. Users selects the syntax they want.
5. Generate the codeblock snippet.
6. Insert snippet into field.
7. Done.

Pros of categorizing

• By categorizing you can show more syntaxes, while keeping the dropdown small and scrollable.
• You already have the functionality for the table helper, so it's probably easy to use the same concept for /codeblock.

Cons of categorizing

• Figuring out the correct category for each item can be a bit tricky.
• With the category proposal, you no longer show all items in a single place which makes discovery of the syntaxes a bit harder.

Alternative: add items to current list

You can also decide to just add json, markdown and yaml to the current list, and accept that users have to scroll a bit more to find the item they want.

[omerbensaadon]

Hey we're going to investigate adding these, give us a bit and we'll get back to you!

[koenpunt]

Maybe the list of languages should be based on the languages used in the project/repo?

[HonkingGoose]

@omerbensaadon Thank you for considering my ideas! ❤️

[bond]

Would be great with support for JSON and YAML! 👍

[vanillajonathan]

Insert codeblocks for C# as csharp instead of c# and insert codeblocks for C++ as cpp intead of c++.

[drewnoakes]

Why prefer those forms?

[dodexahedron]

Some uses of the content with bad markdown parsers result in heading styles upon encountering the octothorpe.

Reddit is guilty of that one, in old reddit, and so was a markdown library I used to use for having comments attached to an internal tracker that did some analysis when code blocks were detected.

Fixable by users though, so 🤷‍♂️ IMO.

[hawkerm]

I thought cs was the common pattern for csharp based on file extensions (similar for cpp)? But agree c# does appear wrong, even if it works with the GitHub parser, I think it's uncommon elsewhere.

[Phil-DS]

Love the slash commands idea. However, I feel that there is a missed opportunity. Commands where additional attributes can be added via the menu could be useful having them as arguements.

For example:

• Typing /codeblock python to bring up the menu asking if I wanted a python code block.
• Typing /table 3,3 to bring up the menu asking if I wanted a 3x3 table.

[omerbensaadon]

We hear you, this is similar to the comment by @shadowspawn, see my response there

[denpolischuk]

We're using custom slash commands for some automation in our organization like /deploy-to-staging, that mostly trigger various GH Actions using 'on issue comment' event.
Is there a chance that you could add a feature to have custom slash commands descriptions on org/repo level?

[joshhunt]

@omerbensaadon This looks great, but it would be great if we could enable snippets for public repositories as well.

[maelvls]

Most Kubernetes projects (including cert-manager) use custom slash commands. In the cert-manager project, you can see which commands are available in https://prow.build-infra.jetstack.net/command-help. Commands look like this:

/assign @maelvls
/unassign
/cherrypick release-3.9
/lgtm
/approve
/ok-to-test
/release-note-none
/override dco
/retest
/test pull-cert-manager-master-make-test

It would be formidable if GitHub could autocomplete those commands. We would probably need to define these custom autocompletions somewhere in the GitHub organization settings.

[natemoo-re]

This is also what I'd hoped these would be! At Astro we have quite a few custom GitHub Action-based commands like !bench and !preview. It would be awesome to be able to wire this up in the GitHub UI, ideally with autocomplete. Discord's Slash Commands handle this quite elegantly.

[gabolaev]

same here

[dodexahedron]

Closely related: The ability to disable them would be excellent because of systems that have grown up before this feature. Nuclear on/off at minimum, but per-command or per-"category" of command would be great.

[neverendingqs]

Feature Request:

When using /template in a pull request, it looks like it pulls the default one only. It would be nice to be able to select any of the templates in .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE/.

[mtcA6]

yea it looks like it's the first 10 templates that exist.

edited.
well i wasn't looking JUST at pull requests i was looking at issue templates, it's the first 10 in the list but our org has WAY more

[avi12]

I'd love to have the ability to have a code snippet from a file, whether it belongs to the repository or not
Could be in /snippet

[m2web]

When will the /slash commands be available in Visual Studio Code? 👍🏽 😄

[vanillajonathan]

Ctrl+Shift+P to open the Command Palette. But I guess you meant for Markdown...

[m2web]

Yes, for Markdown. ☺️

[vanillajonathan]

Yeah, that would be really! 👍️

[omerbensaadon]

I uh don't have information about this as a PM at GitHub 😆

[Jak-MS]

/s↵ - saved replies are not in alphabetical order...

[mlippert]

I'm editing a code block and when I delete some text next to a slash this dialog pops up, it's pretty of annoying when I'm editing not trying to enter a slash command

Is there any way to turn off slash commands?

[omerbensaadon]

You can disable this in the feature preview pane

We'll work on ways of making this less intrusive (perhaps only triggering slash commands when they are on a new line?) before we take away the option to turn this off.

Sorry for the frustration

[hackerb9]

@omerbensaadon I agree with that it would be nice if / was less intrusive. Perhaps there could be an "expert" option that allows slash commands to work but without the "helpful" popup? Or, even better, could there be an area reserved underneath or to the side of the text box where popups can go without interrupting the flow of typing? Thanks!

[Perlence]

Adding the Slash commands button causes the toolbar to wrap incorrectly in the code comments on 1440 px wide displays.

Here's how the toolbar looks without the Slash commands button.

[omerbensaadon]

Noted! thank you!

[mentholi]

This feature actually drives me mad! Is there any way to disable these completely? Also as a side note, the popup doesn't close when clicking outside of it in PR editor. 0/5.

[omerbensaadon]

Sorry to hear that, you can disable it site-wide via Feature Preview: https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/using-github/exploring-early-access-releases-with-feature-preview#exploring-beta-releases-with-feature-preview

[HinTak]

This should be mentioned at the beginning. Months of suffering could be avoided.

[omerbensaadon]

I'll add it to the Discussion description...

[nalbion]

GitHub CoPilot groups the slash commands under agent/participant. Maybe another config option could be to only make slash commands available after mentioning @github or @some-app-agent? That way people wouldn't have to disable it completely, but could opt-in as needed

[brandicph]

Would be great with a /suggestion command while doing reviews. Seems like the suggestion button disappeared.

Here's how it looks (with preview feature enabled)

Here's how it used to look like (with preview feature disabled)

[mdhq66]

When I use the "/Template" slash command in an issue, it only displays a maximum of 10 templates even though there are 25+ in our template repository. Has anyone else experienced this issue? The documentation on their website says it should display all templates.

Resolving this limitation issue will be a huge help to our IT Team and organization as a whole to streamline our clinical trial startup workflow.

[mtcA6]

Yea I have the same issue it's really annoying. The order isn't clear either how it picked those 10 to show.

[mdhq66]

I agree! I was so excited to use this new feature, so our team could apply the templates to the issue when needed instead of when the issue is created since there is a lag between when the issue is created vs. started on. It would prevent us from using stale workflow information and having to manually remove the stale workflow information and then copy and paste the relevant workflow information from the Template repository. It would be a nice bonus for us to be able to order them too. Good idea!

[yashsway]

Would love a slash command that would automatically pull all commit messages from commits captured in the PR into the same format used when doing squash commits and insert the multi-line text (preferably a list with each commit itemized) where the slash command was triggered.

I follow conventional commit syntax which means all my commits are self-documenting and in my org we enforce a "Summary of Changes" for every PR which essentially needs to contain the same information. It would make it much easier/efficient if I could pull all those in first and then massage it to summarize my changes.

[TWiStErRob]

Bar the existence of a slash command, you can achieve a lesser version of this feature with a simple GHA. (click to expand)

• Trigger: on: issue_comment (created, edited)
• Only run on PRs
• Only run if comment body contains magic string (e.g. /commit_list) (example)
• Step: run: gh api ... to edit comment via GH REST API replacing text.

You should be able to get the comment ID from the comment event.

Not an ideal process, but at least possible right now.

[yashsway]

@TWiStErRob oh nice! Thanks for putting this together - appreciate the suggestion. I'll look into leveraging this for the time being.

[tristdrum]

I was hoping /quote would introduce a quote block in markdown.

[Keavon]

I'd like a slash command to make it more quick to insert <kbd></kbd>, like by typing /kbd and having it insert the opening and closing tags with the cursor placed in the middle.

[leite08]

re: "saved replies"

• ability to create/store a comment from the PR comment section
• ability to search saved replies based on the title

[droundy]

I find it very disconcerting that this pops up a dialog that takes the focus while I'm trying to type in a suggestion in a pull request review.

On top of that, there is no visible close button, so it's not obvious how to get rid of the thing that is preventing me from continuing to type.

[HinTak]

This is my opinion too. A while back the maintainer of this feature responded that you can disable this feature under your own profile in the feature preview tab, I think. So I went ahead to disable it. Never saw it again. HTH.

[ASLE90]

رابط المستندات: https://docs.github.com/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/about-slash-commands

يمكنك تعطيل هذه الميزة التجريبية على مستوى الموقع عبر معاينة الميزة: https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/using-github/exploring-early-access-releases-with-feature-preview#exploring-beta -الإصدارات مع ميزة المعاينة

[markspl]

Feature Request:

A command for PR description, which creates list of commit messages. E.g. /commits

[markspl]

Sorry for requesting this again! After posting I noticed yashsway requested this already: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/40299#discussioncomment-8941625

[stanlrt]

Some blocks such as callouts are missing

[dodexahedron]

👍

I'd also appreciate some other common items like task lists, as that's a fairly common thing. Maybe that could work like typing /tasklist item 1,item 2,item 3, with the comma-separated elements becoming the list items with empty [ ] in front of them on pressing return or tab?

Sequence therefore would be /tasklist my, cool list, of ,tasks [return], yielding:

• my
• cool list
• of
• tasks

And an only tangentially related thought that just gave me: Maybe also have a subset of common unicode emojis like ✅ and ❌? Github is one of the few websites where, for whatever reason, the windows emoji panel sometimes won't pop up when pressing 🪟 + . with a text area focused, even though it works on other tabs in the same browser process. Sometimes even happens immediately after successfully using it in the same page load.

[ASLE90]

بعض الكتل مثل وسائل الشرح مفقودة

[fiducioso-dan]

I was going to approve a PR and wanted to include a fun gif so I thought I'd try /giphy. I was sorely disappointed to discover that it's not there. I guarantee you will get so much user adoption of slash commands if you integrate with any gif/meme provider.

[dodexahedron]

+1

Sometimes we need a little whimsy to break up the work day, ya know? 😅

[markusfalk]

When using /templates and apply one, the configured labels of that template are not applied to the current issue.

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[Greg-Smulko]

Can alerts be added to slash commands too, please?

[alvaromartmart]

yes please, I keep forgetting the keywords 😄