Working with the GraphQL API

Linear's public API is built using GraphQL. It's the same API we use internally for developing our applications.

If you're new to GraphQL, Apollo has resources for beginners. The official documentation is another good starting point.

Endpoint

Linear's GraphQL endpoint is:

https://api.linear.app/graphql

It supports introspection so you can query the whole schema.

Authentication

Right now we support personal API keys and OAuth2 authentication.

OAuth2

If you're building an application for others to use, we recommend you use OAuth2 authentication. Once you completed the authentication flow and acquired an access token, you can pass it with header: Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>

curl \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <Replace this with your access token>" \
  --data '{ "query": "{ issues { nodes { id title } } }" }' \
  https://api.linear.app/graphql

Personal API keys

For personal scripts API keys are the easiest way to access the API. Visit Security & access settings to create and manage them.

To authenticate your requests, you need to pass the API key with header: Authorization: <API_KEY>

curl \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: <Replace this with your API Key>" \
  --data '{ "query": "{ issues { nodes { id title } } }" }' \
  https://api.linear.app/graphql

Linear SDK

The Linear SDK exposes the Linear GraphQL schema, and makes it easy to access models, or perform mutations. We recommend using it to interact with the GraphQL API. It is written in TypeScript, allowing all operations to be strongly typed.

Getting Started

We recommend using a GraphQL client to introspect and explore the schema if you are not using the Linear Client (SDK).

Our GraphQL API is explorable and queryable via Apollo Studio, no download or log in required. Click the Schema tab to browse the schema, and click the Explorer tab to run queries.

Once you have your client installed, you can start making queries (read) and mutations (write) to the API.

Queries & Mutations

To get information about the authenticated user, you can use the viewer query:

query Me {
  viewer {
    id
    name
    email
  }
}

As issues (and most other objects) are team based, you first need to get the ID of the team you want to interact with:

query Teams {
  teams {
    nodes {
      id
      name
    }
  }
}

Once you have found the correct team, you can get the issues for that team. Lets make a request with also some other issue metadata:

query Team {
  team(id: "9cfb482a-81e3-4154-b5b9-2c805e70a02d") {
    id
    name

    issues {
      nodes {
        id
        title
        description
        assignee {
          id
          name
        }
        createdAt
        archivedAt
      }
    }
  }
}

We can also get an issue by id:

query Issue {
  issue(id: "BLA-123") {
    id
    title
    description
  }
}

To get the full list of available queries and mutations, introspect the API schema using your favorite GraphQL client.

Protip: Locate the IDs of teams, issues and other entities directly within Linear itself from the command menu: ⌘/CTRL+K "Copy model UUID". This will show results based on the page you're currently viewing within Linear.

Creating & Editing Issues

To create a new issue, we'll need to create a mutation:

mutation IssueCreate {
  issueCreate(
    input: {
      title: "New exception"
      description: "More detailed error report in markdown"
      teamId: "9cfb482a-81e3-4154-b5b9-2c805e70a02d"
    }
  ) {
    success
    issue {
      id
      title
    }
  }
}

This mutation will create a new issue and return its id and title if the call was successful (success: true).

If an issue is created without a specified stateId(the status field for the issue), the issue will be assigned to the team's first state in the Backlog workflow state category. If the "Triage" feature is turned on for the team, then the issue will be assigned to the Triage workflow state.

A common use case after creating an issue is updating the issue. To do this we can use the issueUpdate mutation, using the input field to include whatever it is we want to change. The id provided can be either be the uuid returned by the creation query, or the shorthand id like BLA-123 below.

mutation IssueUpdate {
  issueUpdate(
    id: "BLA-123",
    input: {
      title: "New Issue Title"
      stateId: "NEW-STATE-ID",
    }
  ) {
    success
    issue {
      id
      title
      state {
        id
        name
      }
    }
  }
}

Accessing images

Linear hosts images and other assets uploaded into Linear behind authentication. Only authenticated users can view their assets. This also applies to the API and all images will require authentication to be displayed outside Linear's application. Regular API authentication (OAuth or API keys) is accepted for displaying images. If you're displaying images outside Linear's applications, you should download and self-host them in your application's environment.

Adding mentions in Markdown

In the Linear application, you can add mentions to users, issues, projects, and other resources by typing @ and then selecting a resource to mention.

In the GraphQL API, mentions can be created in Markdown by using the plain URL of the resource. For example:

https://linear.app/linear/profiles/someuser what do you think about  https://linear.app/linear/issue/LIN-123/some-issue here?

Will convert into:

@user what do you think about @LIN-123 some issue here?

Where the bolded segments are mentions.

Adding collapsible sections in Markdown

For collapsible sections in an issue, comment, or document, use +++ [some section title] to start the section and +++ to end it.

+++ Section title

Markdown content (initially hidden)

+++

Fetching updates

If you're working on building an application which display Linear data and you want the information to update (near) realtime, you have few options. To prevent excessive usage of our API, we recommend that you be mindful about your implementation.

Lets say you're displaying a big number of issues in your application and want to update them:

Do's:

• Register a programmatic webhook and get updates for all issues for the team. When you detect changes, update the issue information. You can also automatically register webhooks for OAuth applications.

• If you have to poll recent changes, order results by returning recently updated issue first. See Pagination section above how to implement this

• Filter issues in your GraphQL request instead of fetching all issues and filtering in code.

Dont's:

• Poll updates for each issue in the application. There should never be a reason to do this and your application might get rate limited. See above tactics to implement this better

If you have any questions, visit #api channel on our customer Slack.

Other Examples

Queries

There are many ways to fetch issues. One common use case is to get all the issues assigned to a user.

First let's find our user's id:

query {
  users {
    nodes {
      name
      id
    }
  }
}

Now we can use the assignedIssues field on User:

query {
  user(id: "USERID") {
    id
    name
    assignedIssues {
      nodes {
        id
        title
      }
    }
  }
}

We can do the same thing with workflowStates which represent status fields for teams:

query {
  workflowStates {
    nodes {
      id
      name
    }
  }
}

query {
  workflowState(id: "WORKFLOW_ID") {
    issues {
      nodes {
        title
      }
    }
  }
}

Archived resources

Archived resources are hidden by default from the paginated responses. They can be included by passing optional includeArchived: true as a query parameter for pagination.

Support

If you run into problems or have questions or suggestions, you can join our customer Slack or send us a note ([email protected]). Both options are available through the user menu in the Linear application.