Put an issue on a project board with add_item_to_project

Goal: add an issue to a Projects v2 board, without creating a duplicate item if it’s already there.

Prerequisites

• A classic OAuth-scoped GitHub token (ghp_/gho_) needs the project scope (gh auth login --scopes project). GitHub App installation tokens and fine-grained PATs skip this pre-check and rely on the API call itself to fail if access is genuinely missing.
• You know the project’s owner login, number, and owner type (organization or user).
• The issue already exists.

Steps

1. Call add_item_to_project:

   {
     "owner": "your-org",
     "repo": "your-repo",
     "issueNumber": 101,
     "projectOwnerLogin": "your-org",
     "projectNumber": 1
   }

   Omit projectOwnerType for an organization-owned project; pass "projectOwnerType": "user" for a user-owned one.

2. Read the response: { itemId, existed }.

Verify it worked

• If existed: false, this call created a new item — reload the project board and confirm the issue appears.
• If existed: true, the issue already had an item on this project (for example, a native Auto-add to project workflow added it the moment the issue was created) and the tool returned that item’s ID instead of creating a second one. This is the documented behavior from ADR-0003 — before this plugin’s own tools call anything, check whether the board already has native automation covering this, since a duplicate addProjectV2ItemById call has no idempotency key on GitHub’s side.
• A missing project scope surfaces as { error: "missing_scope", missingScope: "project", presentScopes: [...] } before any mutation is attempted.

See also: tool reference.