Hacker News Reader

You're welcome: http://bugseverywhere.org/

Wow, slick. Thanks for sharing.

What I would like to see is an analogue to offlineimap for GitHub's project management services.

The protocol could even be email based.

e.g. a pull request is an email with the git formatted patch attached. Issues are emails with discussions as threaded mail/news, etc.

That sounds a lot like Linux kernel development.

If you use the "fixes #7" syntax in a branch commit, the issues will be closed only when that branch is merged to your default branch (usually master). I realize that this is only part of what you desire, but it's a useful recent addition: https://github.com/blog/1386-closing-issues-via-commit-messa...