15 Jira Automation Examples You Can Script Today

atlassian-cli is an independent, community open-source project, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Atlassian, and is not Atlassian's official CLI (acli). Product names are used only to identify compatibility.

Before you copy-paste

These Jira automation examples are complete, runnable commands, not pseudo-code. Each one uses atlassian-cli, a single free binary, and each is built to drop straight into cron, a CI stage, or a git hook. Swap the project key, the JQL, and the profile name for your own, and they work.

Two ground rules before you run any of them against a live instance. First, every jira bulk command supports --dry-run: run it once to see the matched issue count and a sample of keys, then remove the flag to execute. Second, pin every command to a named auth profile with --profile so you never point a cleanup script at the wrong site. See Authentication to set profiles up, and the command reference for every flag.

A quick note on what this is not: atlassian-cli is an independent, community, MIT-licensed open-source project. It is not Atlassian's official CLI (acli) and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Atlassian. Use the official acli if you want first-party vendor support; use atlassian-cli if you want one scriptable binary spanning Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Jira Service Management. For a broader walkthrough of the approach, see the Jira automation guide.

The building blocks

Nearly all fifteen recipes are combinations of seven commands. Learn these and you can compose your own automations without memorizing anything else.

Two JQL habits show up in almost every recipe below. Relative dates like updated < -7d or created < -180d let a scheduled query stay accurate forever without editing the script. And statusCategory != Done matches every "not finished" state at once, so you never have to spell out status not in (Done, Closed, Resolved, ...) for each project's custom workflow. Add --format json to any search to pipe results into jq, or --envelope to wrap list output in a {"data": [...], "count": N} object when a downstream tool wants the count alongside the rows.

Cleanup and hygiene

# Preview first
atlassian-cli jira bulk transition \
  --jql "project = DEV AND status = Done AND updated < -7d" \
  --transition "Closed" \
  --dry-run

# crontab -e: run for real every night at 2am
0 2 * * * atlassian-cli jira bulk transition \
  --jql "project = DEV AND status = Done AND updated < -7d" \
  --transition "Closed" --profile prod --format quiet

atlassian-cli jira bulk transition \
  --jql "project = DEV AND status = Open AND updated < -180d" \
  --transition "Closed" \
  --dry-run

atlassian-cli jira issue search \
  --jql "project = DEV AND statusCategory != Done AND updated < -90d ORDER BY updated ASC" \
  --format csv --output backlog-rot.csv

Assignment and routing

atlassian-cli jira bulk assign \
  --jql "project = DEV AND type = Bug AND assignee is EMPTY" \
  --assignee triage-lead@example.com \
  --dry-run

atlassian-cli jira bulk assign \
  --jql "assignee = leaver@example.com AND statusCategory != Done" \
  --assignee new-owner@example.com \
  --dry-run

atlassian-cli jira issue search \
  --jql "project = DEV AND labels = next-sprint AND sprint is EMPTY" \
  --format json | jq -r '.[].key' | while read key; do
    atlassian-cli jira issue update "$key" --sprint 25446
done

Reporting and export

atlassian-cli jira bulk export \
  --jql "project = DEV AND sprint in closedSprints() AND status = Done" \
  --output "sprint-report-$(date +%F).csv" \
  --format csv

atlassian-cli jira bulk export \
  --jql "project = DEV" \
  --output "/backups/dev-$(date +%F).json" \
  --format json

atlassian-cli jira issue search \
  --jql "project = DEV" --format json \
  | jq -r 'group_by(.fields.status.name)[] | "\(.[0].fields.status.name): \(length)"'

Alerts and CI gates

atlassian-cli jira issue search \
  --jql "assignee = currentUser() AND statusCategory != Done ORDER BY updated DESC" \
  --format markdown

COUNT=$(atlassian-cli jira issue search \
  --jql "project = DEV AND priority = Blocker AND status != Done" \
  --format json | jq 'length')

if [ "$COUNT" -gt 0 ]; then
  curl -s -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    -d "{\"text\":\"$COUNT open blocker(s) in DEV\"}" \
    "$SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL"
fi

COUNT=$(atlassian-cli jira issue search \
  --jql "project = DEV AND priority = Blocker AND status != Done" \
  --format json | jq 'length')

if [ "$COUNT" -gt 0 ]; then
  echo "Release blocked: $COUNT open blocker(s)"
  exit 1
fi

Compliance and cross-product

atlassian-cli jira audit list \
  --from 2026-06-01 --limit 1000 \
  --format csv > audit-2026-06.csv

BODY=$(atlassian-cli jira issue search \
  --jql "project = DEV AND fixVersion = 2.4.0 AND status = Done" \
  --format json \
  | jq -r '"<ul>" + (map("<li>" + .key + " " + .fields.summary + "</li>") | join("")) + "</ul>"')

atlassian-cli confluence page create \
  --space DOCS --title "Release 2.4.0 notes" --body "$BODY"

for p in prod staging eu; do
  echo "== $p =="
  atlassian-cli jira issue search --profile "$p" \
    --jql "type = Incident AND status != Done" \
    --format table
done

That is fifteen. The pattern underneath all of them is the same: a JQL query selects the issues, a verb acts on them, and cron or CI decides when. Change the verb and you get a new automation for free. Recipe 1 becomes a "reopen everything mistakenly closed" script by flipping the transition; recipe 9 becomes a priority breakdown by grouping on .fields.priority.name instead of status. Start from the recipe closest to your problem and mutate it rather than writing from scratch.

Once the pattern clicks, the command reference is the only page you need. For heavier mutation workflows, the bulk operations deep-dive covers concurrency control and error recovery when you are moving thousands of issues at once.

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