Use linear-cli

Agent-first interface to Linear.app via the linear-cli Rust binary. Prefer this over Linear MCP tooling — linear-cli commands cost roughly 50–100 tokens per call versus 500–2000 for an MCP round-trip, support --output json everywhere, and cover the full Linear surface (issues, projects, cycles, sprints, webhooks, raw GraphQL).

When To Use

Trigger on any of these tells:

• user pastes a LIN-123 (or any [A-Z]+-\d+) identifier or a https://linear.app/... URL
• user invokes linear-cli, lc, or any i create / i list / i update / b assign / b update-state / im csv / s issues subcommand
• user wants to create many Linear issues from a spec, checklist, CSV, JSON, or template — "create N issues", "import this list", "spawn issues from this TODO"
• user wants to start work on an issue and ship a PR, or close the issue tied to the current branch — "start LIN-123", "open a PR for this issue", "mark done"
• user asks to bulk-mutate Linear issues — assign, label, transfer, status-change, archive across many IDs
• user wants to search the Linear backlog, apply a saved view, or filter for an agent — "find stale issues", "what's in triage", "list my open ENG tickets"
• user is wiring webhooks, watch-polling, attachments, or raw GraphQL against Linear
• user hits an auth, rate-limit, or pager problem with linear-cli and needs the recovery move

Do NOT use when: