Repository homepage shows stale Claude contributor, while Insights shows only actual contributors

[breenyoung]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

Body

I’m seeing inconsistent contributor information on my repository parker-server/parker

The repository homepage Contributors section shows an additional Claude contributor, but Insights → Contributors shows only one actual contributors: myself (breenyoung)

I also verified the current commit history and the relevant commits are authored and committed by me.

Commits in pull request #151 carried unwanted Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 trailers, which added an unintended contributor to the repository. I have already rewritten master to remove them and force-pushed. I need help with the pieces I can't clean up myself.

1. Orphaned commits and PR refs containing the trailers. The original squash-merge commit of PR #151 on master was:
   1457bf1208fdf23f92c9a11843b5c4440f701b8e (now unreachable from any branch)

PR #151 (#151) still records it as its merge commit, and lists these three branch commits, which also contain the trailers:

a8afb1c85890a0705816d8520e9d8d9176a518fa
82feca93ca5eba80ba3d0b63ee0692686477d886
f1e5c640d2cc1487675f86794d91f98c7c692a8e

Could you please remove the cached views of these commits and the references to them (including refs/pull/151/*), and garbage-collect them from the repository, if that's possible for this PR?

For completeness: master was rewritten more than once, so these later commits are also orphaned. They contain no trailers, but PR #152 still records the first as its merge commit:

07ccce5f4b917fea45e02d858d93c0c035fdaefc
1831e2b11c1980b42be4b7bb6f96b3bc6c42682f (recorded as PR #152's merge commit)

2. Stale contributor count. The current master head is fe0e2d463fc0d1da1dcb3b8d37db4bbe7754c5e5. Its history has no co-author trailers. The contributors graph and the REST API (/repos/parker-server/parker/contributors) already show only me, but the repository front page still says 2 contributors and lists the account associated with noreply@anthropic.com. That account's graph is empty. Could you please refresh the cached contributor list for this repository?

The incorrect contributor has remained visible on the repository homepage for several days, including after additional pushes and refreshes.

Thanks!

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[tayfuryldz]

You've already done the part that can be fixed from Git: the current branch history no longer contains the co-author trailers, and both Insights and the contributors API agree with that. I wouldn't force-push again.

The remaining PR refs and the repository homepage contributor cache are GitHub-side data. Repository owners can't delete refs/pull/* themselves, and rewriting master doesn't rewrite the historical PR object. GitHub's docs also note that contributor displays can remain stale after history rewrites and recommend Support if they are still wrong after the refresh window.

I'd send Support exactly the SHAs and PR numbers you listed and ask for the stale contributor cache/PR-backed attribution to be reviewed. Your current API vs homepage mismatch is useful evidence because it shows the reachable history is already clean.

[breenyoung]

Thanks for the reply , will they even do anything for free plans?

[kurupdevs]

Yes - Support handles data-integrity issues like a stale contributor cache on all plans, including free. Response times can be slower than on paid plans, but the ticket won't be refused because you're not paying. Send them exactly what you listed here: the SHAs, the PR numbers, and the repo name.

Before that, one self-serve thing worth trying: in another thread on this exact symptom, someone got the homepage contributor cache to refresh by switching the repo's default branch to a different branch and then switching it back. It's a hack, but it's instant and costs nothing - if the ghost contributor disappears, no ticket needed. If it survives that, open the ticket at github.com/contact with your evidence and they'll clear the cached data on their side.

[breenyoung]

Hack worked after doing switching back and forth a couple times. Thank you so much!