As I kept running into GitHub auth issues on each new local setups, I documented the steps here.

This gist documents how to set up your local dev env, especially on a headless Ubuntu machine, to push local Git changes to remote GitHub repositories.

It features

• fine-grained auth token
• headless env, e.g. remote ubuntu dev machine, where browser-based auth does not work well

Generate a personal access token in GitHub UI

To acquire the permission to push local changes to the remoate GitHub repos.

• Create a personal access token in your GitHub website.
  • [Your profile icon] --> [Personal access tokens] --> [Fine-grained tokens] --> [Generate new token]
  • Fill out "Token name" and "Expiration".
  • Select All repositories for "Repository access".
  • In the "Permissions" section, click on "+ Add permissions" button
    • Select Contents with Read and write access. This should give you permissions to push changes to GitHub.
  • Click "Generate token" and store the token in a safe place(e.g. 1Password).

Authenticate local Git to push changes to GitHub

• Install gh-cli locally.
• Login gh with the previous personal access token

gh auth login

## Here is an example of my personal setup
#  Where do you use GitHub?  --> GitHub
#  What is your preferred protocol for Git operations on this host? --> HTTPS
#  How would you like to authenticate GitHub CLI? --> Paste an authentication token (the personal access token)

• Make Git use GitHub CLI’s credential helper.

gh auth setup-git

# Now you should be able to push changes
git push