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About automation for issues and pull requests with query parameters

You can use query parameters to share URLs with customized information.

In this article

Query parameters are optional parts of a URL you can customize to share a specific web page view, such as search filter results or an issue template on GitHub. To create your own query parameters, you must match the key and value pair.

Tip: You can also create issue templates that open with default labels, assignees, and an issue title. For more information, see "Configuring issue templates for your repository" or "Manually creating a single issue template for your repository."

You must have the proper permissions for any action to use the equivalent query parameter. For example, you must have permission to add a label to an issue to use the labels query parameter.

If you create an invalid URL using query parameters, or if you don’t have the proper permissions, the URL will return a 404 error page.

Supported query parameters

Query parameterExample
bodyhttps://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo/compare/main...pull-request-test?quick_pull=1&body=Fixes+the+problem. creates a pull request, comparing the branches main and pull-request-test, with the comment "Fixes the problem" in the pull request body.
titlehttps://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo/issues/new?labels=bug&title=New+bug+report creates an issue with the label "bug" and title "New bug report."
labelshttps://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo/compare/main...pull-request-test?quick_pull=1&labels=bug creates a pull request, comparing the branches main and pull-request-test, with the label "bug."
templatehttps://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo/issues/new?template=issue_template.md creates an issue with a template in the issue body.
milestonehttps://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo/issues/new?milestone=testing+milestones creates an issue with the milestone "testing milestones."
assigneeshttps://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo/issues/new?assignees=octocat creates an issue and assigns it to @octocat.
projectshttps://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo/issues/new?title=Bug+fix&projects=octo-org/1 creates an issue with the title "Bug fix" and adds it to the organization's project board 1.

Filling issues and pull requests with custom templates

This is the legacy workflow to create an issue template. We recommend using the upgraded multiple issue template builder to create multiple issue templates. For more information, see "About issue and pull request templates."

You can use the template query parameter to specify a template to automatically fill the issue or pull request body. The template query parameter works with templates stored in an ISSUE_TEMPLATE or PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE subdirectory within the root, docs/ or .github/ directory in a repository.

If a repository contains only the default pull request or issue template, any new issues or pull requests will have the default template in the body.

For more information, see "Creating a pull request template for your repository" or "Manually creating a single issue template for your repository."

Further reading