By connecting Slite with GitHub, you can search and ask questions across the issues and pull requests in your connected repositories.
This article covers connecting GitHub, how Slite Agent uses your data, and permissions.
Connecting GitHub & the Slite Agent
Required permissions for setup
To connect Slite and GitHub, you must have the necessary permissions* in both platforms.
In Slite: Permission to add or remove agent sources depends on your team's settings. By default, only workspace admins or owners can set up a connection. However, a Slite admin can enable a setting to allow all members to add and remove agent sources.
In GitHub: You need read access to the repositories you want to connect, plus permission to install GitHub Apps in the organization. For most organizations, only org admins can install apps.
*If you don't have these permissions, ask a GitHub org admin to install the Slite app and grant access to the repositories you need.
Initial GitHub connection
In Slite, click Agent Sources in the sidebar (at the bottom).
Click + New source , then choose or search for GitHub and click Connect GitHub .
A new window will open. Review the permissions Slite is requesting and click Allow .
Back in Slite, select the GitHub repositories you want to sync.
The initial sync will start in the background.
How Slite Agent uses your GitHub data
Slite Agent indexes issues and pull requests from the repositories you connect — titles, descriptions, and metadata like state (open/closed/merged), assignees, reviewers, labels, milestones, and dates. Comments, code, commit history, and repository metadata are not synced.
When a repository is first connected, Slite Agent imports all issues and pull requests modified in the last 365 days. After that, Slite Agent uses GitHub webhooks to receive near-real-time updates — changes you make in GitHub usually appear in the Slite Agent within seconds.
Access control & privacy
GitHub is a Shared source: once a repository is connected, its content is available to your Slite workspace as a whole. Slite Agent does not mirror GitHub's per-user repository permissions — anyone with access to the source in Slite Agent can search content from any connected repository, including private ones. To limit who can query GitHub content, choose which repositories to connect and use Slite's access controls.
By default a newly connected repository is restricted to workspace admins. To open it to more people, go to the connection in the Agent Sources panel and adjust access. See Controlling access to shared sources for details.
Frequently asked questions
Does Slite Agent write back to GitHub?
No. Slite Agent is strictly read-only — it doesn't open issues, leave comments, change labels, modify pull requests, or push to your repositories.
Is code from my repositories indexed?
No — the GitHub source only indexes issues and pull requests. If you want Slite Agent to index a repository's source files, you need to add it as a separate Git source and enable the Index code option there. This works even for repositories hosted on GitHub.
How quickly do changes in GitHub appear in Slite Agent?
Usually within seconds. Slite Agent registers webhooks on connected repositories, so issue and pull request updates are pushed to Slite Agent in near-real-time.
What happens if a repo is made private after we connect it?
The connection keeps working as long as the Slite GitHub App still has access to the repo. Removing the app from a repo on the GitHub side stops sync for that repo.