Bug: Issue template builder fails to stage templates on soft navigation, causing "The commit cannot be empty" error

[patrickryankenneth]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Issues

Body

Summary

When navigating to the Issue Template builder via Settings > General > Features > Issues > "Set up templates", selecting a template from the "Add template: select" dropdown fails to add the template card to the UI or stage it in the form payload.

However, the UI still marks changes as pending, lighting up the green "Propose changes" button. If the user clicks "Propose changes" and attempts to commit, the backend rejects it with:

"The commit cannot be empty"

A full browser refresh (F5 / reload) completely fixes the issue and allows templates to be added and committed normally, pointing to a client-side navigation / Turbo hydration lifecycle bug.

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Steps to Reproduce

1. Go to any repository -> Settings -> General.
2. Scroll to the Features section -> under Issues, click "Set up templates".
3. In the template builder (/issues/templates/edit), click the "Add template: select" dropdown.
4. Select "Bug report" (or Feature request / Custom template).
5. Notice: No template card is added or rendered on the canvas, but the "Propose changes" button in the top right turns green.
6. Click "Propose changes" -> click "Commit changes".
7. Observe the error: The commit fails with a red banner stating:
   The commit cannot be empty
8. Now, refresh the page in the browser (F5).
9. Click "Add template: select" again -> select a template.
10. Notice: The template card now renders properly (Bug report - Preview and edit), and committing works as expected.

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Expected Behavior

• Selecting a template from the dropdown after clicking "Set up templates" should immediately render the template card and stage the file to be committed.
• It should not allow proposing or submitting an empty commit diff.

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Actual Behavior

• Soft navigation leaves the component in a state where dropdown selections toggle dirty state without actually appending templates to the DOM or form tree.
• Submitting produces an empty commit failure banner.
• Only a hard reload restores normal functionality.

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Environment

• URL: https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/issues/templates/edit
• Reproducibility: 100% when navigating via the Settings UI button.

Guidelines

• I have read the above statement and can confirm my post is relevant to the GitHub feature areas Issues and/or Projects.

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