REST Code Search API returns zero results for existing terms in some repositories

[vistar941]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

API

Body

Since approximately August 29, 2026, the REST Code Search API has been returning zero results for terms that definitely exist in some repositories.

Reproduction

Repository:

https://github.com/vistar941/CustomNavigationTitle

The term CustomNavigationTitle exists in Package.swift, README.md, and other files:

https://github.com/vistar941/CustomNavigationTitle/blob/main/Package.swift

Request:

gh api --method GET search/code \
  -f q='CustomNavigationTitle repo:vistar941/CustomNavigationTitle' \
  -f per_page=3

Actual response:

{
  "total_count": 0,
  "incomplete_results": false,
  "items": []
}

The request returned HTTP 200. It was not rate-limited:

X-RateLimit-Resource: code_search
X-RateLimit-Limit: 10
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 9
X-GitHub-Request-Id: ED9E:3E30C7:AF8C3A:EE1C50:6A93E846
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2026 08:22:30 GMT

Expected result: at least Package.swift and README.md should be returned.

Control query

The API is not failing for every repository. The following request, made seconds later with the same authentication and client, returned seven results:

gh api --method GET search/code \
  -f q='"package main" repo:cli/cli' \
  -f per_page=3

Response summary:

{
  "total_count": 7,
  "incomplete_results": false
}

Its request ID was:

X-GitHub-Request-Id: 85ED:281F75:B400A4:F29365:6A93E850

A single-character query such as a repo:vistar941/CustomNavigationTitle also returns results, while longer terms that definitely exist return zero results.

I have observed the same behavior with multiple other public and private repositories. This was working normally until approximately yesterday.

The GitHub web Code Search interface appears to be affected as well. I added the web-search reproduction details to this related report:

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/206192#discussioncomment-18204982

Could GitHub please investigate whether some REST Code Search indexes or shards have become inconsistent?

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[trusktr]

Code search seems to be recently broken.

• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/206112#discussioncomment-18211824

[Ketho]

The code search in repo: functionality seems to have been working again since at least one day.

[muhammad-a-dev]

Ketho’s observation that repo: started working again fits a transient indexing/serving incident rather than a query-syntax or rate-limit problem. Also, incomplete_results: false only says the search request completed; it does not prove that the index was current. A normal 200 with total_count: 0 therefore cannot safely mean “the term is absent.”

For automation, I’d use a fail-closed fallback:

• If the expected file/path is known, read it at the exact ref with the Contents API (or fetch the blob by SHA) and search that content. This bypasses full-text indexing:

from base64 import b64decode
import requests

r = requests.get(
    "https://api.github.com/repos/vistar941/CustomNavigationTitle/contents/Package.swift",
    params={"ref": "main"},
    headers={"Accept": "application/vnd.github+json"},
    timeout=20,
)
r.raise_for_status()
text = b64decode(r.json()["content"]).decode("utf-8")
found = "CustomNavigationTitle" in text

• For an arbitrary full-repository search, use a shallow/local checkout and ripgrep; the Contents API is not a scalable replacement for full-text search. If you must stay API-only, enumerate the Git tree and fetch only candidate blobs, while respecting the tree/blob limits.
• When a sentinel term is expected to exist, retry a zero result a couple of times with backoff and record X-GitHub-Request-Id, timestamp, query, and ref. Alert or use the fallback rather than accepting zero as authoritative.

Given that the web UI was affected too, paired REST/UI timestamps and request IDs from a failing window would be particularly useful to GitHub. Since the report now appears intermittently recovered, rerunning the exact reproduction periodically should also show whether the index has caught up or the problem is still shard-specific.

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