Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

Windows skill reference docs assume mktemp/POSIX paths despite shell = powershell

Open
  • Is something wrong?
#3,600 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Maintainers usually reply within 1 day

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
48/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
powershell, python
Domain
documentation, tooling

Research direction

Start with tools/skillgen/platforms.toml and the existing translator block in tools/skillgen/gen.py, then inspect the generated Windows references/add-watch.md and references/query.md. Decide with maintainers whether to extend translation or use Windows-specific fragments. Done means the Windows reference commands no longer require native Windows users to run literal bash mktemp commands.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

help wanted

Follow up from #3439 / PR #3442.

The Windows platform declares shell = "powershell" in tools/skillgen/platforms.toml, and the repo already has a dedicated, deliberately strict POSIX to PowerShell translator for the core skill body (tools/skillgen/gen.py, the _PY_INVOKE_POSIX/_PY_INVOKE_PS_OPEN etc. block). That translator only runs on the core monolith, not on the per-platform references/*.md files.

As a result, graphify/skills/windows/references/add-watch.md and graphify/skills/windows/references/query.md still contain literal mktemp /tmp/graphify_*.XXXXXX bash commands inside fenced code blocks, which don't exist on a native Windows shell. A Windows host following these reference docs (add, watch, query, path, explain) gets a command it can't run.

Fixing this properly needs a decision on approach, not a one line patch:

  • Extend the existing strict translator to also run over references/*.md, adding a translation for mktemp (PowerShell equivalent is roughly New-TemporaryFile or [System.IO.Path]::GetTempFileName(), but the "capture the printed path into a variable" idiom differs from bash's $(mktemp ...) and needs its own translation rule), or
  • Give windows its own reference fragment variant for the handful of sections that use mktemp, or
  • Some other approach the maintainers prefer.

Flagged by the graphify review bot on PR #3442 (graphify/skills/windows/references/add-watch.md:15, escalate/medium), confirmed real by grepping — the same pattern also appears in references/query.md (6 more occurrences), which the original finding didn't call out.

Dominant language
Python
Stars
124k
Forks
11.9k
No merged PRs in 30d

Getting set up

This project ships no dev container, Dockerfile or contributing guide, so setting up is up to you: start from its README, and see our first-contribution guide for the general steps.

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from Graphify-Labs/graphify

All issues in Graphify-Labs/graphify

Similar issues

More Python issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.