Stale co-author remains in repository sidebar contributors after force-push (>48h, Insights already correct)

[sheepjin11]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

Body

Repository: https://github.com/unist-ssl/TreePass (public, academic artifact repo with USENIX AE badges)

What happened

On Aug 4, 2026 (~06:28 UTC), a commit containing an unintended Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 noreply@anthropic.com trailer was briefly pushed to the default branch main (commit 7a2ad4c). It was amended and replaced by force-push within minutes.

Current state (verified)

• No commit reachable from any branch or tag contains that co-author trailer — the repo has a 3-commit history on main, all authored by sheepjin11.
• The rewritten commit 7a2ad4c is not reachable from any ref.
• Insights → Contributors is already correct — the co-author does not appear there.
• However, the repository sidebar "Contributors" section still shows "Claude" more than 48 hours after the rewrite. Several normal commits have been pushed to main since, which did not trigger a refresh.

What I've tried

• Waited well past the documented ~24h refresh window (Viewing a project's contributors (https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/viewing-activity-and-data-for-your-repository/viewing-a-projects-contributors)).
• Opened a support ticket (#4637948) as the org owner; it was auto-closed because my account's support tier only includes self-service resources, which is why I'm posting here.

Ask

Could GitHub staff invalidate/recompute the cached sidebar contributor data for this repository? Since this is a public artifact repository for an academic paper, we'd like the displayed contributor list to accurately reflect the actual authors. Thank you!

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[jay1466]

Thanks for the detailed report. Since Insights → Contributors already reflects the rewritten history while only the repository sidebar is stale, this does seem more like a caching or indexing issue than a Git history problem.

The fact that:

• the original commit is no longer reachable,
• multiple new commits have been pushed since the force-push, and
• the documented refresh period has already passed,

suggests the sidebar contributor cache may not be invalidated after certain history rewrites.

It would be useful if GitHub either refreshed the sidebar automatically when contributor metadata changes after a force-push, or provided a manual "Refresh contributors" action for repository maintainers. That would help avoid stale contributor information, especially for repositories where accurate authorship is important.

[Aleph1-9012]

I’m seeing the same stale contributor-sidebar issue.

Repository: https://github.com/Aleph1-9012/Tsugumori
Repository ID: 1306273093
Current main: 0cfbec15a2eeb2756b454ac27b78e0a09491aa11

The sidebar shows seven contributors, while the current Git history and both contributor API endpoints show only Aleph1-9012 and SleeperOfSaturn.

Five accounts from removed history remain cached: samyns, deadpanda-c, FaintFlower, Ferxas, and martzoz. The repository is standalone (fork: false), and those accounts have no reachable commits.

Please purge or rebuild the repository-overview contributor index.