Historical commits not appearing on contribution graph after verifying author email

[saeidkh96]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Profile

Body

Hi GitHub Community,

Some of my historical commits are not appearing on my GitHub contribution graph.

The affected commits were created using a different email address that I previously used for Git commits. I added that exact email address to my GitHub account and verified it approximately two weeks ago.

I have confirmed that:

• The affected commits are on the repository's default branch (main).
• They are present on origin/main.
• The author email used in those commits is now verified and associated with my GitHub account.
• GitHub correctly recognizes me as the author on the individual commit pages.
• More than two weeks have passed since the email was added and verified.

Despite this, the historical contributions are still missing from my profile contribution graph.

Expected behavior

After adding and verifying the email address that was used to author the historical commits, I expected those commits to be attributed to my account and appear on my contribution graph.

Actual behavior

GitHub correctly associates the commits with my account on their individual commit pages, but they still do not appear on my contribution graph.

I have also followed GitHub's documentation for troubleshooting missing contributions, including verifying the author email associated with the commits.

Is there another condition that could prevent these commits from appearing on the contribution graph even when GitHub already recognizes the account as the commit author?

Thank you.

[github-actions[bot]]

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[TongyiDai]

This is expected behaviour, and the key is that commit attribution and contribution-graph indexing are two separate systems.

You have satisfied attribution: the commit page shows you as author, the email is verified on your account, and the commits are on the default branch of a non-fork. But adding + verifying that email only fixes attribution (and re-attribution on the individual commit pages) — it does not automatically trigger a backfill/rebuild of your historical contribution graph. There is no public API call or self-service button that forces that historical rebuild.

Two things worth checking before you escalate:

1. Confirm the commit's author date actually falls inside the window you're viewing. The graph places the square based on the author date, so a backdated author date lands it on that past day, not today.
2. Make sure "Include private contributions" is on if any affected repo is private.

Since everything you listed already checks out, this is exactly the case GitHub Support can fix manually. Open a private ticket at https://support.github.com with the repo + an example commit SHA — the community forum can describe the problem but cannot rebuild your graph.