Support duplicating issues with sub-issues (linked child issues)

[silvioana]

Hi GitHub team,

First of all, thank you for shipping the new “Duplicate issue” feature (#8485) — it's a great step forward!

However, I’d like to request an enhancement to this functionality: the ability to duplicate an issue that also contains sub-issues (i.e. linked child issues) and automatically duplicate those as well.

Many of us use GitHub Issues as hierarchical task breakdowns:

• A parent issue acts as a container (like an epic or a milestone)
• It links to several sub-issues via task lists or “tracked by” relationships

When we duplicate a parent issue, it’s typically because we want to reuse the structure — not just the text, but also the breakdown of tasks. Currently, the sub-issues are not duplicated along with the parent, meaning:

• We have to manually duplicate each sub-issue
• Then re-link them to the new parent issue
• This is time-consuming and error-prone

When duplicating a parent issue:

• GitHub may prompt whether to also duplicate the sub-issues
• If confirmed, it should create new copies of all sub-issues
• And link them appropriately to the new parent

This would be extremely helpful in workflows where the same task breakdown is used repeatedly across projects or time periods.
Would love to hear your thoughts on feasibility, and whether this might already be considered.

Thank you!

[labudis]

@silvioana Thanks for your suggestion and detailed use case! I agree that being able to duplicate a parent issue and its sub-issues would make managing repeated workflows much easier. I’ve shared your feedback with the team and will keep this issue updated with any progress. If others want this too, please add a 👍 or share your thoughts here!

[github-actions[bot]]

🕒 Discussion Activity Reminder 🕒

This Discussion has been labeled as dormant by an automated system for having no activity in the last 60 days. Please consider one the following actions:

1️⃣ Close as Out of Date: If the topic is no longer relevant, close the Discussion as out of date at the bottom of the page.

2️⃣ Provide More Information: Share additional details or context — or let the community know if you've found a solution on your own.

3️⃣ Mark a Reply as Answer: If your question has been answered by a reply, mark the most helpful reply as the solution.

Note: This dormant notification will only apply to Discussions with the Question label. To learn more, see our recent announcement.

Thank you for helping bring this Discussion to a resolution! 💬

[einaren]

@labudis @silvioana Please do not let this Issue be closed due to "out-of-date". Perhaps just remove the Question label as it really is a feature request?

[silvioana]

Hello! This is indeed a feature request rather than a question with a resolvable answer, so the “Question” label may not be the best fit here. The need still stands — duplicating parent issues along with their linked sub-issues would significantly streamline repeated workflows, and several users have expressed interest in this functionality.
Could the GitHub team (@labudis ) consider removing the Question label so the discussion isn’t auto-closed? This request is still relevant and not out-of-date.
Thanks again to everyone supporting this!

[labudis]

Thanks, I have changed the label to Enhancement and we will keep this idea open!

[marcss]

This would be very useful functionality for me. Ideally, I'd like to create a new issue and several new sub-issues based on one or more issue templates. I think duplicating an existing issue and its sub-issues would work fine.

In the meantime, I'm considering creating an issue template with a task list and once the issue is created using this template, manually converting the tasks to sub-issues.

[matiz-amped]

Hi, this would be highly appreciated also for me, as usually I use a issue as a "project template" with sub-issues referring to that project. This additional function would allow me to duplicate a project template - issue with all its sub-issues and use it then for multiple projects. Thanks.

[carolina-amped]

Hello, please, Github team, keep this feature request open as it would strongly improve the way projects are created and managed on Github. The ability to duplicate an issue together with all its sub-issues would speed up immensely the creation and management of multiple projects. Thank you so much!