From 34a1300d461c445e73a3d334c1b087ee80fe3e23 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Claude Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2026 02:03:02 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] docs: installing gh also breaks the surface probe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The page told a run not to install `gh` on the grounds that the result would 403 — true, but it reads as an efficiency note, so an agent that is root with apt available can still talk itself into it. The sharper reason, measured: `gh auth status` exits 0 in a remote session even while printing "The token in GH_TOKEN is invalid", because the proxy-injected placeholder satisfies it. A session that installed `gh` then answers this page's own decide-once probe with `gh`, follows the commands as written, and walks into the 403s — the exact failure the probe exists to prevent. The probe is only honest while `gh` is absent. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NHQzyeUkEHqMmEZDo9zsNX --- skills/GITHUB_ACCESS.md | 9 +++++++++ 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+) diff --git a/skills/GITHUB_ACCESS.md b/skills/GITHUB_ACCESS.md index 46349c6e..eae08858 100644 --- a/skills/GITHUB_ACCESS.md +++ b/skills/GITHUB_ACCESS.md @@ -76,6 +76,15 @@ Because of the second wall, `gh` could not be a drop-in here even if an org admin connected the GitHub App. The MCP surface is not a workaround for a missing `gh` — on this surface it is *the* GitHub client. Use the table above. +And installing it does not just waste the effort — **it breaks the probe +above**. `gh auth status` exits 0 in a remote session even as it prints "The +token in GH_TOKEN is invalid": the `proxy-injected` placeholder in `GH_TOKEN` +is enough to satisfy it. So a session that installed `gh` answers its own +decide-once probe with `gh`, reads this page's commands as commands, and walks +straight into the 403s above — the failure mode the probe exists to prevent. +The probe is only honest while `gh` is absent, which is the strongest reason to +leave it that way. + ## The mapping | Operation | `gh` | MCP tool |