Linear

Your open Linear issues as a column in yabbistir's panel, a copied issue key turned into a link, and a copied error turned into a new issue.

• The Linear column lists the issues assigned to you that are not done, canceled or a duplicate, most recently updated first, up to 50. A row reads ENG-123 Login button does nothing on Safari, with In Progress · Engineering · High under it. ↵ pastes the issue's link, ⇧↵ pastes a Markdown link, [ENG-123: Login button does nothing on Safari](https://linear.app/…), and ⌘C copies the link.
• Paste as Linear link is offered on a copied issue key such as ENG-123, and on a link to an issue in Linear. It looks the issue up and pastes the Markdown link with its title.
• Create Linear issue from this is offered on copied text. It makes a new issue from it in your team, pastes the new issue's link, and says ENG-124 created in Linear.

Example

A test fails in Terminal. Copy what it printed:

TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'map')
    at renderList (app.js:12:9)
    at main (app.js:40:3)

Click into your chat with the team, open the panel, type linear and pick Create Linear issue from this. Linear gets an issue titled TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'map'), with the whole trace in a code block as its description, and its link is pasted into the chat.

Later, someone writes "is ENG-124 fixed?". Copy ENG-124, open the panel, press ⇧ on the copy and pick Paste as Linear link: [ENG-124: TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'map')](https://linear.app/…) is pasted.

Setup

1. In Linear, open Settings › Account › Security & access and create a key under Personal API keys. The least it needs is two permissions: Read, for the column, the links and finding your team, and Create issues, for new issues. Full access works too, but gives the key more than the extension uses. A key limited to some teams sees, and creates, issues in those teams only. If you are a member rather than an admin and can't make a key, a workspace admin has to allow it first, under Settings › Administration › API › Member API keys.
2. In yabbistir, open Settings → Extensions → Linear and paste the key into API key.
3. Optionally, fill in Team key for new issues with the key your team's issues start with, such as ENG. Left empty, new issues go to your team when you are in only one; when you are in several, the action asks you to choose.

Until there is a key, the column shows one row asking for it. ↵ or ⌘C on it copies open https://linear.app/settings/account/security, which opens Linear's API-key page when you run it in Terminal.

How a copy becomes an issue

• Title: the first line that has a letter or a digit. Code fences are skipped, and a Markdown heading's # and a log line's time stamp are left out. When only a fence line has words, as in ```Error in prod, the title is those words. Runs of spaces become one, and a title over 100 characters is cut at a word, with "…".

• Description: the whole copy, without blank lines at its ends. It goes in a code block when yabbistir took the copy for code, or when it reads as code, a log or a stack trace:

  • a single line such as TypeError: … or 2026-11-04 08:12:03 ERROR …;
  • two lines that both look like code, or one of them a stack frame, a log line, a prompt such as $ npm test, or an indented line;
  • three lines or more, at least half of which look like code, log lines, stack frames or indented code.

  Indented list items, such as 1. Open the panel or - Press return, count as prose. Anything else is kept as it is, and Linear reads it as Markdown. A description over 50,000 characters, its code block's fences included, is cut at a line, with a note under it saying so.

• Everything else is the team's default: the issue has no assignee, labels, project or priority, and starts in the team's default state.

Permissions and privacy

• network, limited to api.linear.app, Linear's API. It is reached only when you open the panel or choose an action, and only for this:
  • Opening the panel, when the column's list is over a minute old: one request for your open issues. After a failed request the column waits a minute before asking again, or, after a rate limit, as long as Linear asks.
  • ↵, ⇧↵ or ⌘C on a row: the issue's id, to get its current link and title.
  • Paste as Linear link: the issue key you copied.
  • Create Linear issue from this: the team key from Settings (or a request for your teams, when it is empty), then the new issue's title and description, made from the copy you chose.
• The API key is kept in the macOS Keychain by yabbistir. The extension reads it only to make a request, sends it only to api.linear.app, as the request's Authorization header, and never logs it, keeps it or puts it in a message. Messages are the extension's own words; Linear's error texts are never shown.
• Rows stay in memory. The extension reuses its list for up to a minute, remembering only a fingerprint of the key it was made with, so a new key never shows the old key's issues. yabbistir keeps the rows in memory until the Mac locks or sleeps or the app quits; they never reach yabbistir's history, its search index or the disk. A row's link is fetched when you pick it and not kept.
• Nothing runs on its own. Neither action runs as a hint, so nothing is sent until you choose one.

Limits

• The column shows at most 50 issues, and only those assigned to you.
• Paste as Linear link takes the whole copy as a key: two to ten capital letters and digits starting with a letter, a dash and up to six digits (ENG-123), or a https://linear.app/<workspace>/issue/ENG-123/… link. A lowercase key, or one inside a sentence, is not offered.
• New issues go to one team: the one in Settings, or your only one.
• Linear allows each Linear user 2,500 requests an hour, shared by all their API keys and the other tools that use them. The column asks at most once a minute, after a failure too; when Linear limits you anyway, it waits until Linear takes requests again (three minutes when Linear doesn't say), and its message says when to try again.
• If creating an issue times out or is cancelled, Linear may have made it all the same: check Linear before trying again, or there will be two.
• Telling code from prose is a guess from the copy's first 300 lines. A message with one stack frame in a paragraph stays prose.
• The 50,000-character limit on a description is the extension's own, to keep requests small; Linear documents none.
• A code block's fence is longer than any run of backticks in the copy, up to 32 of them, so only a copy with 32 or more backticks in a row can end its code block early.

Sources

• Linear's GraphQL API: authentication, queries and errors, rate limiting, pagination and filtering.
• Personal API keys, their permissions and the admin setting for member keys: Linear's API and webhooks page.
• The error types for a plan's limits (usage limit exceeded, feature not accessible): Linear's SDK, error.ts.
• Field names, filters and the workflow state types (completed, canceled, duplicate): Linear's public GraphQL schema.