GitHub project management is death by a thousand clicks: triaging issues, writing PR descriptions, checking CI status across repos, closing stale issues.
None of it is hard. All of it takes longer than it should.
Companion handles it by voice. Here's how.
What you need
- Companion installed (download here)
- An OpenRouter API key (free, pay per use — Claude Haiku handles GitHub tasks at fractions of a cent)
- A GitHub account with access to your repos
Step 1: Connect GitHub
Open Settings → Integrations in Companion's sidebar. Find GitHub and click Connect.
You'll authorize via GitHub OAuth. You can restrict access to specific repositories during setup — Companion only sees what you explicitly share with it.
Step 2: Your first automation
Try the most common starting point for developers:
Summarize all open issues assigned to me across my repos. Group them by priority if they're labeled.
Companion queries your GitHub account, reads the open issues, and gives you a prioritized list — cross-repo, in one view, without opening GitHub at all.
Or before you push a PR:
Draft a PR description for the changes I just made. The branch is called feature/auth-refactor. Explain what changed and why, in a format our team uses: summary, context, testing notes.
Companion reads the diff (if you share it), infers the change, and writes a PR description you'd actually be proud to submit.
What it costs
GitHub API calls are lightweight — reading issues and writing comments uses maybe 1,000–3,000 tokens per session. At Claude Haiku rates via OpenRouter, that's roughly $0.001–0.003 per session. Essentially free. You're paying for Companion's intelligence, not its volume.
More workflows
Triage stale issues: "Close all issues in the repo that haven't been updated in 60 days and have no comments. Add a comment explaining they're being closed due to inactivity and can be reopened if still relevant."
Generate release notes: "Look at all the merged PRs in the last two weeks and draft release notes for version 2.4.0 in our changelog format"
Repo health check: "Check the companion-core repo: how many open issues, open PRs, and what's the oldest unmerged PR?"
Contributor stats: "Who contributed the most commits to the main branch last month? List the top 5 contributors and their commit counts"
Issue to PR link: "Find issue #124 and draft a PR description that references it with 'Closes #124' in the footer"
Because Companion can also read your local files and run terminal commands, you can go further — have it read your actual diff, then write the PR description based on real code changes rather than a description you give it.
Achmad Bifari is Creative Designer and Social Manager at Companion. He writes the tutorials and runs @companionbyaios.