create-issue

Create Issue

Create a Linear ticket or GitHub issue for: $ARGUMENTS

Determine Target

Decide where the issue should be created based on user input:

• If the user says "Linear", "ticket", or provides a team key (e.g., AI, NODE, N8N) → Linear
• If the user says "GitHub", "GH issue", or "open source" → GitHub
• If ambiguous, ask the user which platform they want

Linear Tickets

Prerequisites

Verify the Linear MCP is connected before proceeding.

Style Guide

Title

• Sentence case — capitalize only the first word (e.g., "Add webhook verification to Trello trigger")
• Descriptive — a reader should understand the scope without opening the ticket
• 5–15 words — long enough to be specific, short enough to scan
• Imperative mood for features/enhancements — "Add ...", "Support ...", "Improve ..."
• Bug titles — prefix with Bug - followed by a description of the symptom (e.g., "Bug - Pin data not updating after workflow edit")
• No ticket IDs in titles — the identifier (AI-1234) is assigned automatically
• No trailing punctuation

Description

Structure the description using markdown headers. Use the appropriate template:

For bugs:

## Description
[Clear explanation of the problem]

## Expected
[What should happen]

## Actual
[What happens instead]

## Attachments
[Screenshots, videos, or screen recordings that illustrate the problem]

## Steps to reproduce
1. [Step-by-step reproduction]

## Additional context
- n8n version: [version]
- Database: [SQLite/PostgreSQL]
- Hosting: [cloud/self-hosted]

For features / enhancements:

## Goal
[What this adds and why: the user problem it solves]

## Background
[Current state and the gap, plus the technical context needed to plan the work: relevant constraints, prior findings, and links to any related investigation.]

## Scope
[Concrete list of what changes. Name the files or areas to create or modify and any existing pattern to follow.]

## Acceptance criteria
[Testable outcomes, including automated tests.]

## Out of scope
[What this explicitly does not cover]

For tech debt:

## Summary
[What technical improvement is needed]

## Current state
[What the code/system looks like today and why it's problematic]

## Proposed improvement
[What the improved state should look like]

## Motivation
[Why this matters — maintainability, performance, developer experience, etc.]

## Scope
[What is included / excluded from this work]

For spikes / investigations:

## Goal
[What question(s) are we trying to answer]

## Context
[Why this investigation is needed now]

## Questions
1. [Specific question to resolve]

## Expected output
[What deliverable is expected: RFC, PoC, decision document, path matrix, etc.]

## Acceptance criteria
[How we know the spike is done: each question answered, deliverable produced]

Attachments (Screenshots / Videos)

If the user provides screenshots, videos, or screen recordings:

• URLs — embed directly in the description using markdown image syntax (![description](url))
• File paths — if the user provides a local file path, ask them to upload it to a hosting service (e.g., GitHub, Imgur) or use the available Linear MCP attachment tool to attach it to the Linear ticket after creation
• Pasted images in conversation — describe what the image shows in the ticket description and note that a screenshot was provided. You cannot upload binary data directly.

Always mention in the description when visual evidence was provided, even if it cannot be directly embedded.

Priority

Guardrails:

• Default to Normal (3) unless the user explicitly states otherwise
• Never set Urgent (1) unless the user explicitly says "urgent", "P0", "production down", or "security vulnerability"
• Never set None (0) — always make a priority assessment. If unsure, use Normal (3)

Status

Guardrails:

• Never create issues in Triage status — Triage is for externally-reported issues that enter through automated pipelines (GitHub sync, support escalation). Agent-created tickets have known context and should skip triage
• Default to Backlog — use this when the issue is acknowledged but not yet planned for a sprint
• Use Todo only when the user indicates the work is planned for the current cycle or should be picked up soon
• Never set In Progress, Review, or Done at creation time

Team

• Try to fetch up-to-date team areas of responsibility from Notion using the available Notion MCP search tool (search for "areas of responsibility" or similar). Use the fetched data to determine the best team for the issue.
• If Notion MCP is unavailable or the lookup fails, fall back to these common teams: Engineering (N8N), AI, NODES, Identity & Access (IAM), Catalysts (CAT), Lifecycle & Governance (LIGO), Cloud Platform, Docs (DOC)
• Always ask the user which team if not obvious from context or the Notion lookup
• If the issue is node-specific, it likely belongs to NODES
• If it involves AI/LangChain nodes, it likely belongs to AI

Labels

Apply labels from these groups as appropriate:

Type (pick one):

• bug — something is broken
• feature — net-new capability
• enhancement — improvement to existing functionality
• tech debt — internal quality improvement
• spike — time-boxed investigation
• doc — documentation-only change

Area (pick if applicable):

• frontend, backend, performance, testing, infra, DX, Security-Team

Source (pick if applicable):

• Internal — created by team members
• GitHub — originated from a GitHub issue
• Sentry — originated from error monitoring
• Zammad — originated from support

Bucket (pick if applicable):

• Use the relevant feature-area bucket (e.g., Credentials, Canvas/Node, RBAC, LangChain nodes, Form Trigger, etc.)

Guardrails:

• Always apply a type label — every ticket needs at least a type
• Do not apply triage-state labels (Triage: Pending, Triage: Complete, etc.) — these are managed by triage automation
• Do not apply release labels (n8n@1.36.0, etc.) — these are managed by release automation
• Do not apply docs-automation labels — these are managed by docs automation

Estimates

Only set an estimate if the user provides one or explicitly asks for one. Use t-shirt sizes:

Creating the Ticket

1. Gather required fields — if any are missing, ask the user:

   • Title
   • Team
   • Description (draft one from the user's input using the templates above)

2. Present a preview before creating — show the user:

   • Title
   • Team
   • Status
   • Priority
   • Labels
   • Description (abbreviated if long)

3. Wait for user confirmation — do not create until the user approves

4. Create the ticket using the available Linear MCP issue-creation tool:

   title: <title>
   team: <team name>
   description: <markdown description>
   priority: <priority number>
   state: <status name>
   labels: [<label names>]
   

5. Report back with the issue identifier and URL

Things to Never Do (Linear)

• Never create issues in Triage status
• Never set Urgent priority without explicit user instruction
• Never apply triage-state, release, or docs-automation labels
• Never set assignee unless the user explicitly asks
• Never set a cycle or milestone unless the user explicitly asks
• Never create duplicate issues — if the user describes something that sounds like it may exist, search first with the available Linear MCP issue-search tool

GitHub Issues

Prerequisites

Verify gh CLI is authenticated: gh auth status

Important Context

The n8n GitHub issue tracker (n8n-io/n8n) is bug-only. Feature requests and questions are redirected to the community forum. Blank issues are disabled — the bug template must be used.

Style Guide

Title

• Sentence case — same as Linear
• Descriptive of the symptom — what is broken, not what you want
• No prefixes required — do not add "Bug:" or "Bug Report:" (the template handles categorization)
• No trailing punctuation

Body

GitHub issues must follow the bug report template structure:

### Bug Description

[Clear explanation of the bug]

### Steps to Reproduce

1. [Step 1]
2. [Step 2]
3. [Step 3]

### Expected Behavior

[What should happen]

### Debug Info

[If available — output from Help > About n8n > Copy debug information]

### Operating System

[e.g., macOS 14.2, Ubuntu 22.04]

### n8n Version

[e.g., 1.72.1]

### Node.js Version

[e.g., 20.11.0]

### Database

SQLite / PostgreSQL

### Execution Mode

main / queue

### Hosting

n8n cloud / self hosted

Guardrails:

• Always include reproduction steps — issues without them get closed as closed:incomplete-template
• Include debug info if available — this is critical for triage
• Never file feature requests as GitHub issues — redirect the user to the community forum or suggest creating a Linear ticket instead

Labels

Do not manually apply labels when creating GitHub issues. The triage automation handles labeling:

• triage:pending is auto-applied
• status:in-linear is auto-applied when synced

Creating the Issue

1. Verify it's a bug — if the user describes a feature request, inform them that GitHub issues are bug-only and suggest alternatives (Linear ticket or community forum)

2. Draft the issue using the template above, filling in fields from the user's input

3. Present a preview before creating — show the user:

   • Title
   • Body (abbreviated if long)
   • Repository (default: n8n-io/n8n)

4. Wait for user confirmation

5. Create the issue using gh:

   gh issue create --repo n8n-io/n8n --title "<title>" --body "$(cat <<'EOF'
   <body content>
   EOF
   )"
   

6. Report back with the issue number and URL

Things to Never Do (GitHub)

• Never file feature requests as GitHub issues
• Never create issues without reproduction steps
• Never manually apply labels — let automation handle it
• Never create issues in repositories other than n8n-io/n8n unless the user explicitly specifies

Cross-Linking

When both a Linear ticket and GitHub issue exist for the same problem:

• Linear → GitHub: Add the GitHub issue URL as a link attachment on the Linear ticket
• GitHub → Linear: Add https://linear.app/n8n/issue/<TICKET-ID> in the GitHub issue body

If the user creates one and mentions the other exists, offer to add the cross-link.