View GitHub Files

Fetch raw file content from GitHub URLs without HTML/JS clutter.

Prerequisites

GitHub CLI must be installed and authenticated:

gh auth status

When to Use

When a user shares a GitHub file URL like:

• https://github.com/user/repo/blob/main/src/file.go
• https://github.com/user/repo/tree/v1.0/docs/README.md

Use this skill instead of WebFetch to get clean source code.

Helper Script

python3 scripts/view_github_file.py https://github.com/user/repo/blob/main/path/to/file.go

The script:

• Parses the GitHub URL to extract owner, repo, ref, and path
• Uses gh api to fetch file content
• Decodes base64-encoded response
• Returns clean source code

Supported URL Formats

https://github.com/{owner}/{repo}/blob/{ref}/{path}
https://github.com/{owner}/{repo}/tree/{ref}/{path}

Where {ref} can be a branch name, tag, or commit SHA.

Fallback (if script fails)

Parse the URL manually and use gh api:

# From URL: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/README.md
# Extract: owner=golang, repo=go, ref=master, path=README.md
gh api repos/golang/go/contents/README.md?ref=master --jq '.content' | base64 --decode

Or use raw.githubusercontent.com:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/golang/go/master/README.md