GitHub

GitHub is Birch’s most complete integration: pull requests with checks, reviews, and comments; assigned issues in the Inbox; and everything the PR surfaces can do. Connect with a personal access token — cloud or GitHub Enterprise Server.

Creating the token

In Settings → Integrations, click the GitHub tile and then the Create a token on GitHub ↗ link in the connect form. It opens https://github.com/settings/tokens in your browser — or, if you have typed a GitHub Enterprise base URL, that instance’s own token settings page.

Both token flavors work — the token field’s watermark reads ghp_… or fine-grained token:

• Classic personal access tokens (ghp_…).
• Fine-grained tokens, scoped to the repositories you want Birch to see.

Grant the token the ability to read your repositories, pull requests, and issues; to create and merge PRs from Birch, it also needs write access to pull requests.

Adding the account

1. Open Settings → Integrations (⌘, / Ctrl+,) and click the GitHub tile.

2. Fill the form:

   Field	What to enter
   Personal access token	Your ghp_… classic or fine-grained token
   Custom base URL	Leave empty for github.com. For GitHub Enterprise Server, enter the API root: https://<host>/api/v3

3. Click Verify & connect. Birch verifies the token against GitHub before storing it; on success the account appears with a Connected badge, a Verified: timestamp, and Sync now / Remove buttons.

The token is stored in the system keychain, never in Birch’s database. You can add several GitHub accounts — for example github.com plus an Enterprise instance — and they sync independently. See the providers overview for the shared connection model.

What you get

• Pull requests — open PRs on the repository page and the workspace PR card, with state and checks; review requests and activity on your PRs land in the Inbox.
• Assigned issues — synced into the Inbox Tasks tab. Images embedded in an issue’s description are downloaded and shown as thumbnails, and handed to the agent when you start a workspace from the task.
• Issue status updates — Birch can move an issue when you start a workspace or create a PR from it (Settings → Tasks; see status transitions).
• AI code review — new PRs can be reviewed automatically, an Anthropic API feature.
• Notifications — desktop, sound, and Teams notifications for PR activity; see Notifications.

Supported PR operations

• Create a PR from a workspace — the Create PR dialog supports Create as draft — or with birch pr create (--title, --body, --base, --draft). See Create a pull request.
• Check out a PR into a new workspace: birch pr checkout <url-or-id>.
• Merge with birch pr merge <url-or-id> — --strategy merge|squash|rebase (default merge), plus --delete-source to remove the source branch.
• List PRs with birch pr list (--all includes merged and closed).
• Comments and reviews — Birch syncs PR comments in the background, though the window that shows them currently has no entry point in the shipped build (see Review & manage PRs); an on-demand AI review runs with birch review run <pr-id>.

Full flag reference: CLI — pr.

Troubleshooting

• Verification fails — the token is likely expired or revoked. Generate a new one via the same Create a token on GitHub ↗ link and reconnect.
• Organization repos or PRs are missing (SAML/SSO) — in organizations that enforce SAML single sign-on, a classic token must be authorized for that organization on GitHub’s token page, and a fine-grained token must be granted access to the organization’s repositories. Until then, GitHub simply hides those resources from the token.
• GitHub Enterprise Server won’t connect — the base URL must be the API root, https://<host>/api/v3, not the plain web URL.
• Rate limiting — Birch’s background sync runs on a ~10-minute cadence precisely to stay under GitHub’s limits. If you hit a limit anyway (many accounts, frequent manual Sync now), wait a few minutes and let the next cycle catch up.