Contributors sidebar lists Claude; commits remain only in merged PR ref

[ziqq]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

Body

The homepage of https://github.com/ziqq/Codetree shows claude among three Contributors, while https://api.github.com/repos/ziqq/Codetree/contributors?anon=1 returns only ziqq (147 contributions). The default branch is main at e0488e1c4a7139df14ce3c3d1ad34882309502d5.

Following advice in https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/212910#discussioncomment-19575671, I fetched all 30 branch refs, 6 tags and 45 available PR head refs into a temporary bare repository. Searching commit author and committer names/emails, and Co-authored-by trailers for Claude or Anthropic, found three commits with Claude as author and committer, reachable only from refs/pull/1/head among the fetched refs: 5c96b5dfefdc4a985bba7828f61dac95186337bd, fd7a5d0b0cadd7d596c8350d43f95b57266d57e9 and f24b557fe9e40722a8199ab9f2f7fb801b8db9d3. PR #1 is merged and closed. No matching commits were reachable from the fetched branches or tags.

Can a retained PR head explain the homepage Contributors entry, and is there a supported way for GitHub to refresh or correct that listing while preserving PRs, branches, tags, releases and history? I cannot tell whether this is stale data or expected behavior.

Support ticket https://help.github.com/ticket/personal/0/4944176 was closed with a referral to self-service resources. The ticket is private. The prior Community discussion was automatically closed because it was submitted without the required UI template.

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[100rootrain]

I checked the repository, and the retained PR head isn't what keeps claude there. The Claude commits were on main for about two minutes, and the homepage cache still remembers them.

Where claude comes from.

• PR Welcome to GitHub product feedback #1 was merged on Oct 6 at 19:08 UTC with a regular merge commit, 0613a042. That put f24b557, fd7a5d0 and 5c96b5d, authored and committed as Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>, on main.
• Your activity log shows a force push to main at 19:10:33 UTC, two minutes later: 0613a042 → 114cbcd9. The rewritten commits (67fcf8c, 2202d7b, 1aefb6e) have the same messages and dates, authored by you. That's why compare/0613a042...main reports behind_by: 4.
• Since then, no branch (main, dev and all ziqq/* branches) and none of the 6 tags contain a Claude commit. Only refs/pull/1/head (5c96b5d) still does, which matches what you found.

The homepage Contributors box is cached separately, and a force push doesn't trigger a recount. Normal pushes don't either: main has had 39 PR merges and 5 pushes since Oct 6, and the box hasn't changed. Its data (/_sidebar) still returned contributorCount: 3 with claude at 09:53 UTC today. I saw the same pattern in #212740, where commits that were on master for only 12 minutes stayed in the box.

Is refs/pull/1/head the cause? Most likely not. In #212998, refs/pull/14/head still pointed at other people's commits. After a default-branch switch, the refreshed list left them out anyway. So you don't need that ref removed. It does mean PR #1's Commits tab will keep showing the three Claude commits. You can't change that yourself. GitHub Support can remove the ref, but PR #1 would lose its commit list.

ziqqineyo isn't stale. 9dd7bbf ("ci: gate release publication and verify the remote tag") is on main and has a Co-authored-by: ziqqineyo <a.a.ustinoff@yandex.ru> trailer. The REST API only counts commit authors, but the sidebar also counts co-authors. That's why ziqqineyo appears only in the sidebar, and it will stay after a refresh. Your search only looked for Claude and Anthropic, so it didn't come up. Removing it would mean rewriting that commit, which you said you want to avoid.

How to refresh it without rewriting anything: switch the default branch away and back. This fixed the same stale entry in #212504, #212678, #212972 and #212998.

1. Settings → General → Default branch: switch to dev. It contains no Claude commits. Alternatively, create a temporary branch at main (git push origin main:tmp) and switch to that.
2. Open the repository homepage once, wait a couple of minutes, then switch the default branch back to main. Delete tmp if you created it.

Nothing is renamed, so PRs, branches, tags, releases and history stay as they are. In #212972 and #212998, the list was corrected first, and contributorCount caught up a few hours later. So check again later in a private window. The expected end state is ziqq and ziqqineyo, with a count of 2.

If claude is still listed a day after the switch, only GitHub can purge the cache. In that case, reopen the ticket with one specific request: rebuild the cached homepage Contributors list for ziqq/Codetree. Include the force push above (0613a042 → 114cbcd9, Oct 6, 19:10:33 UTC) and the /_sidebar vs REST API mismatch. #204093 collects reports of this exact issue.

[kaluarachchiteshan]

Hi,

Your investigation is thorough. Here is how I read it.

1. Can a retained PR head explain the sidebar entry?

Plausibly, yes. The sidebar and the contributors API are computed differently. The API (/contributors) counts commits reachable from the default branch, which is why it lists only ziqq. The homepage sidebar appears to draw on the wider repository, and a merged PR keeps its commits reachable through refs/pull/1/head even after the branch is deleted. I'm not aware of GitHub documenting this, so treat it as a likely explanation, not a confirmed one.

One detail worth checking: PR #1 is merged, but the three Claude-authored commits were found only in refs/pull/1/head and not in main. That usually means the PR was squash-merged or rebase-merged, so main holds new commits (with a different author) while the originals stay only in the PR ref. That matches what you see.

2. Is this expected behavior or stale data?

I can't tell which from outside. Both are possible:

• Expected: the sidebar counts authors from commits reachable in the repository network, including PR refs.
• Stale: the sidebar cache wasn't refreshed. Your repo has a fairly small number of contributors, so it should refresh after new activity, but a cache can lag a long time.

3. Safe things you can try, without touching PRs, branches, tags, releases or history

• Push a normal commit to main (no force-push) to prompt a recalculation:

git commit --allow-empty -m "chore: refresh repository stats"
git push origin main

• Check the repository signed out or in a private window to rule out a browser cache.
• Wait a day or two after the push before drawing conclusions.

4. What you can't do from your side

You can't delete or rewrite refs/pull/* references. They are managed by GitHub. Only GitHub can remove them, and removing them would break PR #1's commit history, which goes against your goal of preserving PRs. So if the sidebar reflects PR refs, there may be no clean fix that keeps PR #1 intact.

5. If you want a human to look at it

Since the support ticket was closed with a self-service referral, try:

• Replying on ticket #4944176 asking for a human review and citing the three commit SHAs and refs/pull/1/head.
• Opening a new request at https://support.github.com/contact and clearly stating that the API shows one contributor, the sidebar shows another, and the only reference is a merged PR ref.
• Posting this as feedback in the Community template (the earlier thread was closed for missing it), asking whether PR refs are expected to feed the sidebar.

Summary: a retained PR head is a reasonable explanation, and I don't know of a supported way to remove it while keeping the PR. If the sidebar entry matters to you, the choices are to wait for a cache refresh, ask Support to look, or accept the display as a side effect of the merged PR.