A hands-on walkthrough of building IssueCrush, a React Native app that uses the GitHub Copilot SDK to generate AI-powered summaries for GitHub issue triage. The post covers the server-side architecture required (since the SDK needs a Node.js runtime and Copilot CLI), session lifecycle management, prompt engineering with structured issue metadata, response handling with timeouts, graceful degradation when AI is unavailable, and client-side caching to avoid redundant API calls. Key lessons include always cleaning up SDK sessions, structuring prompts with metadata rather than raw text, and designing fallback summaries from issue metadata when the AI service is offline.
Table of contents
Enter IssueCrush: Swipe right to shipThe architecture challengeHow to implement the Copilot SDK integrationKey SDK patternsClient-side service layerReact Native integrationGraceful degradationA few other patterns worth notingDependenciesWhat I learned building thisTry it yourselfTags:Written bySort: