GitHub Org Labels batch update

Script to batch-delete all existing labels in the repositories of a GitHub organization and recreate them based on a standard configuration defined in a local JSON file.

Prerequisites

• GitHub CLI (gh) installed
• jq installed
• An active gh authentication with sufficient permissions on the org (repo scope, plus admin:org if you need to read private repos/org settings)

Authentication

gh auth login

If you already have a GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable set, gh will use it automatically instead of the interactive login. To use the credentials saved by gh auth login instead:

unset GITHUB_TOKEN
gh auth login

Check authentication status with:

gh auth status

The script also checks this automatically at startup and will fail with an error if gh is not authenticated.

Labels file

Create a labels.json file (or any name you prefer) with the list of desired labels:

[
  { "name": "bug", "color": "d73a4a", "description": "Something isn't working" },
  { "name": "enhancement", "color": "a2eeef", "description": "New feature or request" },
  { "name": "Low Priority", "color": "cfd3d7", "description": "Low priority issue" }
]

Usage

chmod +x reset-labels.sh
./reset-labels.sh [options] [org] [labels.json]

• [org] — GitHub organization name (optional, default: top-solution)
• [labels.json] — path to the JSON file with the labels (optional, default: labels.json in the current directory)

Options

• -h, --help — show usage and exit
• --dry-run — show what would be deleted/created without making any actual changes

Examples

# use default org (top-solution) and labels.json in the current directory
./reset-labels.sh

# specify a different org
./reset-labels.sh my-org

# use a different JSON file
./reset-labels.sh my-org config/labels-prod.json

# preview changes without applying them
./reset-labels.sh --dry-run my-org

# show help
./reset-labels.sh -h

What the script does

For each repository in the organization:

1. Deletes all existing labels in the repo
2. Creates the new labels read from the JSON file

With --dry-run, the script only prints what it would delete and create, without performing any actual changes.

⚠️ Warning

• This operation is destructive: deleting labels also removes their association with issues/PRs that used them.
• The script iterates over all repositories in the org (limit 1000). For orgs with many repos, consider adding a sleep between iterations to avoid hitting GitHub's API rate limit.
• Recommended: run with --dry-run first, or test on a single repo / staging org, before running the script for real in production.