How to search in projects?

[jcelerier]

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Hello,
I'm trying to understand how I can search for a task I put in a project (especially a draft task).

e.g. If I create a draft task in a project, with the keywords "foo" and "bar" in the task description, I would expect some search feature to be able to bring me to said task in the context of its parent project when I type "foo" "bar".

Alas, the main search does not return anything when I try this. What's the correct solution to look for a given task? (in my case I have a good few hundreds over 40+ projects, so just remembering in which project each task is is already a challenge)

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• I have read the above statement and can confirm my post is relevant to the GitHub feature areas Issues and/or Projects.

[jcelerier]

Example: here in this project I have "'MMPose" task: ONNX support (view)
This is what I see when I search:

[souredoutlook]

I hit this today I don't think you scan scope a search by "issues in a project" sadly

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[jcelerier]

it's still relevant

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[jcelerier]

It's still relevant

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[jcelerier]

It's still relevant

[atul-sirsode]

Hi @jcelerier ,

Hi there,

Right now, GitHub’s global search doesn’t index draft tasks in Projects.
It only picks up content that lives as Issues, PRs, Discussions, code, etc. Draft tasks are stored differently, so they won’t show up when you search from the main search bar — even if the keywords are in the title or description.

A few practical ways to work around this:

Search within the project itself – Open the project and use the filter bar at the top (you can type keywords directly, or use field:value filters). This works for draft tasks, but only within that project.

Convert draft tasks to issues – If you need them searchable across all of GitHub, converting them to Issues will make them show up in the global search. You can still keep them in the project board after conversion.

Use the GitHub API – With the GraphQL API, you can query all your projects and filter tasks (including drafts) by keyword. A small CLI script or spreadsheet export can make it much easier to search across 40+ projects.

Tag or prefix your tasks – Adding a consistent tag like [Foo] or [Bar] in the task title makes it much easier to find them quickly with the project filter.

Unfortunately, until GitHub indexes draft tasks globally, these are the main options. If this is a frequent challenge for you, it might be worth opening a feature request so the search team knows it’s something users want.

Hope that helps clear things up!

const fetch = require('node-fetch');

const GITHUB_TOKEN = process.env.GITHUB_TOKEN; // set in environment
const SEARCH_KEYWORD = process.argv[2] || "foo"; // keyword from CLI args

if (!GITHUB_TOKEN) {
  console.error("Please set GITHUB_TOKEN env variable.");
  process.exit(1);
}

const query = `
query($after: String) {
  viewer {
    projectsV2(first: 50, after: $after) {
      nodes {
        title
        items(first: 100) {
          nodes {
            content {
              ... on DraftIssue {
                title
                body
                url
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
      pageInfo {
        hasNextPage
        endCursor
      }
    }
  }
}
`;

async function runSearch() {
  let after = null;
  let results = [];

  do {
    const res = await fetch("https://api.github.com/graphql", {
      method: "POST",
      headers: {
        "Authorization": `Bearer ${GITHUB_TOKEN}`,
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
      },
      body: JSON.stringify({ query, variables: { after } })
    });

    const data = await res.json();
    if (data.errors) {
      console.error("API Error:", data.errors);
      process.exit(1);
    }

    const projects = data.data.viewer.projectsV2;
    for (const project of projects.nodes) {
      for (const item of project.items.nodes) {
        const content = item.content;
        if (content && (
          content.title?.toLowerCase().includes(SEARCH_KEYWORD.toLowerCase()) ||
          content.body?.toLowerCase().includes(SEARCH_KEYWORD.toLowerCase())
        )) {
          results.push({
            project: project.title,
            title: content.title,
            url: content.url || "Draft task – no direct link"
          });
        }
      }
    }

    after = projects.pageInfo.hasNextPage ? projects.pageInfo.endCursor : null;
  } while (after);

  if (results.length === 0) {
    console.log(`No matches found for "${SEARCH_KEYWORD}".`);
  } else {
    console.log(`Found ${results.length} matches:\n`);
    results.forEach(r => {
      console.log(`Project: ${r.project}`);
      console.log(`Task: ${r.title}`);
      console.log(`Link: ${r.url}\n`);
    });
  }
}

runSearch();

[jcelerier]

How can I open such a request ? I thought this was the forum for it 😅

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[Stephen-Rumble]

hmmm

[jcelerier]

up

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[jcelerier]

yo

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[jcelerier]

.

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[Abdxlrahman]

GitHub’s global search currently does not properly search inside draft tasks in Projects. That’s why searching keywords like “foo” or “bar” does not find them.

Right now, the best option is to:

• Use the filter/search inside the specific Project
• Convert important draft tasks into Issues if you need global search support
• Add labels/tags for easier filtering

Unfortunately, there is no good global search for draft tasks across all projects yet.

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