Issues from your tracker

The Issues tab lets you work a project's GitHub issues inside Plexus — list, open, edit, comment on and create them on the project's own tab strip — and turn any one of them into a session that stays linked to it.

Everything the tab does goes from your machine to GitHub, with the account you connected under Settings → Git ▸ Providers. It never passes through us, and nothing about it — the issues, what you edit, how often you look — reaches us. See Privacy.

Before you start

Connect GitHub. Open Settings → Git ▸ Providers and click Connect GitHub — the same one-click sign-in that pull requests use. See Git providers. Bitbucket is not supported for issues yet.
Attach the repository. Click the Settings button at the right end of the project's tab strip (or open Settings… from the project's ⋯ menu and pick Toolchain), press Install on the GitHub issues card, and pick the repository — the search starts on the one the project's origin remote points at. An Issues tab appears on the strip. To share one tracker across every project in a workspace, attach it on the workspace instead — see Toolchain.

The list

The tab opens on the repository's open issues, most recently updated first, and never pull requests, even though GitHub files those under issues. Each row is what github.com shows: the state glyph, the title, the labels, #123 opened 3 days ago by author, the comment count, who is assigned, and — Plexus's own addition — the Sessions already started for it and a Start session button. Click the title to open the issue inside the tab.

The toolbar filters the list the way GitHub does:

Control	What it does
Open / Closed	Which state to list. GitHub is asked again when you switch
Search issues	Filters the rows already on screen by title, label or author; `#123` matches a number
Assigned to me · Mentioning me · All	Whose issues, judged by the GitHub account you connected
Labels, Assignee, Milestone	Narrow the list — labels combine with and, as on GitHub. The pickers offer the repository's own labels, collaborators and open milestones
Sort	Recently updated, newest, or most commented, either direction
New issue	Opens a form in the tab — title, text, labels, assignees — and opens the issue once GitHub has it

Plexus fetches the 300 most recently updated items and keeps the issues among them; because GitHub counts pull requests in that 300, a repository with many open pull requests shows fewer issues, and the tab says Only part of the list was fetched when older ones were left out. A search typed while that is the case searches only the issues fetched, and the tab says so.

How often it refreshes

The list refreshes itself about every minute while Plexus is the focused window, every five minutes while the window is visible but not focused, and not at all while it is hidden. Press Refresh to ask now. An Updated 2m ago hint next to the toolbar says when the list last came back. Two projects that inherit one tracker from their workspace share a single request, so a busy workspace does not ask GitHub ten times a minute.

Rate limits and reconnecting

GitHub's answers are shown as they are, in a line above the list:

Rate-limited. GitHub is rate-limiting requests — trying again in 47 s. The last list stays on screen, and Plexus waits out the time GitHub asked for before asking again. Where GitHub names no wait, it tries again at the next check.
Token rejected, or nothing connected. GitHub rejected the stored token, or nothing is connected — reconnect it to list issues, with a Reconnect GitHub button that takes you to Settings → Git ▸ Providers. After a rejected token Plexus waits five minutes before trying that tracker again on its own.
Anything else — GitHub unreachable, an unexpected answer — shows the message and a Retry button, and Plexus backs off, waiting longer between attempts up to five minutes.

Opening an issue

Click a row's title and the tab shows the issue in place of the list, with Back to return:

the title, the state badge (Open / Closed), who opened it and when, and Open on GitHub;
the text, rendered as GitHub renders it — headings, lists, code, links, task lists. Images and other remote media are left out on purpose: Plexus never loads anything from the web into the App on your behalf, and a link opens in your browser;
Labels, Assignees and Milestone in a side column;
the comments, each rendered the same way, and a box to write one.

Everything you can change on github.com you can change here, and it is saved to GitHub the moment you do — the change shows immediately and is undone with a message if GitHub refused it:

Change	How
Title	Click the pencil beside it, or the title itself; Enter saves, Escape cancels
Text	Edit under the text opens an editor with a Write / Preview toggle; Save or Cancel
State	Close issue / Reopen issue in the header — closing offers completed or not planned, as GitHub does
Labels, assignees, milestone	The pickers in the side column; assignees and labels take the whole set you leave ticked
Comment	Write in the box at the bottom and press Comment

What GitHub does not let your account change — assigning someone who is not a collaborator, say — is shown as GitHub answers it: the field returns to what GitHub holds and the refusal is named.

Start a session from an issue

Every row, and the opened issue's header, has Start session. It opens the New session dialog with:

the name filled in as #123 The issue's title — a suggestion, which you can change;
a Linked to #123 chip under the name, naming the repository;
a checkbox, on by default, Send the issue to the agent as the first prompt. Leave it on and the agent's first prompt is the issue's title, its link and its full text, with a request to reference #123 in its commit messages. If you also pick a template, the template's prompt goes first and the issue follows it.

The branch comes out as plexus/123-the-issues-title, because that is what Plexus already does with a session called #123 …. The link to the issue is written together with the session, so it is there whatever you rename the session to.

From then on:

the session's context bar shows a #123 chip — click it to open the issue in the session's issue sidebar;
the issue's row in the Issues tab lists the session under Sessions — click it to jump there;
Create PR starts the pull request's description with Closes #123, so merging it closes the issue on GitHub. It is ordinary text you can edit, and it survives an AI-drafted description. See Pull requests.

On a workspace's Issues tab, Start session opens the same dialog without a project chosen, and asks.

The link lives as long as the session does — archive or delete the session and it goes with it. There is no unlink button, and a session created any other way carries no link even if its branch happens to contain a number.

What a plan gates

The tab needs a plan — an individual plan, or a seat on an organization's. Listing, opening, editing, commenting and creating all go from your machine to GitHub with your own token, and every one of them is behind the same gate; it is the sixth thing a plan unlocks — your issue tracker in Plexus, which covers Plnnrly projects the same way — and the one of them that is not a service we run.

Toolchain — attaching trackers at the workspace or the project, and the workspace view
Boards — a GitHub project's boards, with the same issue view behind every card
Plnnrly — a Plnnrly project's work items, board and sprints
Sessions & worktrees — the session that an issue starts, and the sidebar that shows it
Git providers — connecting the GitHub account everything here runs on
Plans, seats and billing — what a plan unlocks