Contributors sidebar still shows a removed co-author after history rewrite

[julianurreae]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

Body

Hello,

In this repository the Contributors sidebar still shows the account "claude":
https://github.com/BAMUNOZ91/proyecto_1_esp_data_science_ia

The account was added by mistake through a "Co-Authored-By" line in commit 98792ee. On November 8, 2026, we rewrote the history of main to remove that commit, and it is no longer on any branch.

What we have checked:

• More than 48 hours have passed since the rewrite.
• The contributors API (GET /repos/BAMUNOZ91/proyecto_1_esp_data_science_ia/contributors) no longer lists "claude".
• The sidebar still shows it, even in a private browser window.
• We use free accounts, so GitHub Support closed our ticket and pointed us here.

Is there a way to make GitHub recalculate the contributors shown in the sidebar? Or could a GitHub staff member refresh it for this repository?

Thank you.

[github-actions[bot]]

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[100rootrain]

I checked from the outside, and your branches are clean. Only the sidebar cache is stale:

• All 8 branches (main, developer, docs/dataset-card, feat/*): 0 commits with a Claude author or Co-Authored-By trailer. No tags.
• https://github.com/BAMUNOZ91/proyecto_1_esp_data_science_ia/_sidebar (with Accept: application/json) still returns 4 contributors: diemiranda04, julianurreae, BAMUNOZ91, claude.
• There was a push on Nov 10 (03:09 UTC) after the rewrite, and the sidebar didn't change. Normal pushes don't rebuild it, so waiting longer probably won't help.

The workaround confirmed in a similar case (#212504) is to make GitHub recompute the default branch. On a personal repo only the owner can change this setting, so @BAMUNOZ91 needs to do it:

1. Create a temporary branch from main (e.g. main-tmp).
2. Settings → General → Default branch: switch to main-tmp.
3. Open the repository homepage once, wait a couple of minutes, then switch the default back to main and delete main-tmp.

Nothing is renamed, so PRs and links aren't affected.

One leftover you can't remove yourselves: PR #4 was merged from the old history, so refs/pull/4/head still points at 98792ee (the commit with the trailer). Users can't delete pull request refs. I don't think the sidebar counts them, because the same fix worked for other repos. But if claude reappears after the switch, that ref is the likely reason, and only GitHub staff can remove it.

[NaniToka]

Hi @julianurreae ,

This is a well-known behavior with GitHub's repository metadata indexing. Here is why it happens and how to resolve it:

Why It Still Appears

1. Aggressive Contributor Caching: GitHub aggressively caches the Contributors graph and sidebar list. Force-pushing a rewritten git history updates branch pointers, but GitHub does not synchronously flush the contributor cache.
2. Dangling / Orphaned Commits on the Remote: Even after rewriting history locally and force-pushing, the old commits with the original co-author's email still exist in GitHub's server-side Git object database (as dangling/unreachable objects) until an internal garbage collection (git gc) runs. Because GitHub can still find those commit objects, its contributor scanner continues to list the author.

How to Force GitHub to Re-index the Contributors

1. Push a Fresh Commit to the Default Branch:
   Pushing a new commit to your default branch triggers GitHub's contribution background worker to re-evaluate the active commit DAG:

   git commit --allow-empty -m "chore: trigger contributor graph refresh"
   git push origin <main-or-master>

2. Double-Check Commit Trailers:
   Ensure no lingering commits still contain the co-author trailer in their commit messages:

   git log --all --grep="Co-authored-by"

3. Allow Time or Contact Support for Server GC:
   GitHub's contributor graph cache usually refreshes within 24 to 72 hours after new activity. If the user still appears after a few days because dangling commits are cached, you can reach out to GitHub Support and request a manual git gc --prune=now on your repository to purge unreachable objects.

(If this clarifies the issue, please feel free to mark this as the accepted answer!)

[hasanerman]

the api already being clean means it's just the sidebar cache. this worked for someone with the exact same problem a few days ago (https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/212340):

1. create a temp branch from main
2. settings > general > default branch, switch it to the temp branch
3. wait a couple of minutes, then switch it back to main
4. reload the repo page, the contributors list gets recalculated

you can delete the temp branch afterwards.