gh pr view panics when a pull request with more than 100 status checks stops resolving mid-request #14989

Describe the bug

gh pr view crashes with a panic when a pull request has more than 100 status checks and the pull request stops resolving between the two API requests that gh makes to collect them.

The check contexts of a pull request are paginated, so gh makes a second request for the remaining contexts. The second response is read without checking that the pull request it refers to is still there, which produces either a nil pointer dereference or an index out of range error.

Affected version

$ gh version
gh version 2.103.3-71-g736c68f67 (2026-11-07)
https://github.com/cli/cli/releases/latest

This is a build of trunk.

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Open a pull request that has more than 100 status checks, for example one that runs a large CI matrix.

2. While gh pr view is running, make the pull request stop resolving. For example, delete the head branch or the pull request itself.

3. Run:

   gh pr view <number>
   

4. View the output

5. See error

The crash also happens if the pull request still resolves but the list of commits comes back empty, which gives an index out of range error instead of a nil pointer dereference.

gh pr view --json statusCheckRollup reaches the same code.

Expected vs actual behavior

Expected: gh should report that the pull request's checks could not be read, the way it reports other failures while collecting a pull request's data.

Actual: gh panics and exits with status 2.

Logs

panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference
[signal SIGSEGV: segmentation violation code=0x1 addr=0x228 pc=0xd78d54]

goroutine 72 [running]:
github.com/cli/cli/v2/pkg/cmd/pr/shared.preloadPrChecks(0xed5071ec210, {0x29538a0, 0xed5071ec180}, 0xed506c49008)
	github.com/cli/cli/v2/pkg/cmd/pr/shared/finder.go:600 +0x2b4
github.com/cli/cli/v2/pkg/cmd/pr/shared.(*finder).Find.func4()
	github.com/cli/cli/v2/pkg/cmd/pr/shared/finder.go:284 +0x27
golang.org/x/sync/errgroup.(*Group).Go.func1()
	golang.org/x/sync@v0.24.0/errgroup/errgroup.go:93 +0x50
created by golang.org/x/sync/errgroup.(*Group).Go in goroutine 1
	golang.org/x/sync@v0.24.0/errgroup/errgroup.go:78 +0xa5
...
exit status 2

With an empty commit list instead of a missing pull request, the panic is:

panic: runtime error: index out of range [0] with length 0

goroutine 72 [running]:
github.com/cli/cli/v2/pkg/cmd/pr/shared.preloadPrChecks(0xed5071ec210, {0x29538a0, 0xed5071ec180}, 0xed506c49008)
	github.com/cli/cli/v2/pkg/cmd/pr/shared/finder.go:600 +0x426
github.com/cli/cli/v2/pkg/cmd/pr/shared.(*finder).Find.func4()
	github.com/cli/cli/v2/pkg/cmd/pr/shared/finder.go:284 +0x27
...
exit status 2