CLI Student Guide

An end-to-end walkthrough of the gh student CLI (already installed in your Development Environment).

The path: log in → accept an assignment → clone and work → submit.

Before you start

You must have already:

1. signed up for GitHub
2. ensured your GitHub username follows the required labsection#-lastname-firstname format
3. joined the CSE-UNR organization by clicking “accept” in the invitation email
4. opened a terminal window in your development environment

1. Log in

gh student login

This runs gh auth login with the scopes you need. If you skip it, the next command logs you in automatically. gh student logout mirrors gh auth logout.

2. Accept an assignment

gh student accept <org> <classroom> <assignment>

• <org> — your classroom’s GitHub organization.
• <classroom> — the classroom your teacher set up (e.g., cs-principles).
• <assignment> — the assignment slug (e.g., hello).

Already accepted? The command reports Assignment already accepted and leaves your existing repo (and your work) alone.

If accept fails, see Common gh student accept errors in Troubleshooting.

3. Clone and work

Run the git clone command that gh student accept printed by pressing the Enter key. Edit, commit, and push to your repository’s default branch as usual.

4. Submit

From inside the cloned repository:

gh student submit

This snapshots your current branch and pushes it as a new commit. The autograde workflow runs automatically: it tags the commit submit/<UTC-timestamp>-<short-sha>, grades it, and publishes a GitHub Release with your score a minute or two later.

[!NOTE] On most assignments you can also git push directly — the result is the same. gh student submit exists mainly to pull any teacher-side updates to .gitignore and .github/ from the template before pushing. (For a template-less assignment there’s nothing to refresh, so it just commits and pushes.)

Some assignments grade only on submit (your teacher will say so, and a plain push shows a passing check that says the push was not graded). There, gh student submit pushes the submit/… tag that triggers grading — or tag a commit yourself: git tag submit/final && git push origin submit/final. Any tag under submit/ grades.

Some assignments also name milestone tags (e.g. phase1, phase2, complete — your teacher will tell you). Push one to grade that commit: git tag phase1 && git push origin phase1. The graded result appears as a normal submit/… release.

When submit finishes, it prints two URLs:

• Autograde — the Actions tab, where the run appears in a few seconds.
• Releases — where the scored Release lands once grading finishes.

Good to know:

• Every push grades (by default). Each push to the default branch triggers one graded run, which tags and Releases the commit it ends on — so a push of several commits grades once, while the submissions page counts each of those commits. The first commit, from accepting, has nothing to grade and is skipped; the empty commit that opens your Feedback PR at accept time is likewise neither graded nor counted. The latest Release is always your most recent submission. On a submit-only assignment, only gh student submit (or a hand-pushed submit/* tag) grades; regular pushes save your work without grading it.
• Pull after teacher-side workflow updates. If your teacher changes the assignment’s autograding trigger, a small commit lands in your repo. It is neither graded nor counted as a submission. Run git pull before your next push, or git will report a conflict.
• History is preserved. Submissions stack as commits; prior commits stay reachable for review.
• No git config required. Commits are authored with the user.name and user.email configured for your clone, so signed commits stay verified. In a shell with no git identity, submit falls back to your GitHub login and noreply email, so it still works.
• Build artifacts are excluded. Only tracked and untracked-not-ignored files are submitted.
• the gh student accept <org> <classroom> <assignment> command creates a repository at <org>/<classroom>-<assignment>-<username> from the assignment’s template (or a new repository with a README and the autograding files if it’s template-less), then prints a git clone command. The repository is private unless your teacher configured the assignment to create public repositories; in that case accept warns you first that your work will be visible to anyone on the internet.

What accept does, step by step

1. Auto-accepts any pending organization invitation. 2. Looks up the assignment in the classroom's published manifest. 3. Resolves the autograder workflow. 4. Creates your repository (a template copy, or a new README-initialized repository) — private unless the assignment opts into public repositories, in which case you're warned first. 5. Commits the setup files (`.classroom50.yaml` and the autograde workflow). 6. Opens the Feedback PR, when the assignment enables it. 7. Sets your repo role: `push` for an individual assignment, or `admin` for a group assignment (so a group founder can invite teammates). 8. Prints the `git clone` command.

See also

• gh student reference — every command and flag.
• Troubleshooting — debug flags and common errors.