Repository sidebar credits an unrelated user as the only contributor, while the REST API, Insights and the contributors graph all disagree

[MrBlackvanta]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

Body

On 42 of my public repositories, the "Contributors" block on the repository homepage sidebar lists GitHub user [claude] http://github.com/claude) (account id 81847, created 2009-05-07). That account has never contributed to any of them. On 36 of the 42 it is listed as the only contributor, so my own name does not appear at all on the landing page of those repos.

Every other surface GitHub exposes is correct. The REST contributors endpoint, the Insights > Contributors graph, and the commit list all resolve the commits to me.

To be clear about what this is not: claude here is a legacy 2009 user account that happens to hold that username, not an AI or bot attribution feature. No commit in any of these repositories carries a Co-Authored-By trailer or mentions that name.

Reproduction

Both of these are anonymous and read-only, so anyone can run them:

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/MrBlackvanta/tip-calculator-app/contributors \
  | grep -E '"(login|contributions)"'
# "login": "MrBlackvanta"
# "contributions": 16

curl -s -H "Accept: application/json" \
  http://github.com/MrBlackvanta/tip-calculator-app/_sidebar \
  | grep -o '"contributorCount":[0-9]*\|"login":"[^"]*"'
# "contributorCount":1
# "login":"claude"

Repository: http://github.com/MrBlackvanta/tip-calculator-app

Scope, measured today

I swept all 111 of my public repositories through the same _sidebar endpoint:

Sidebar result	Repos
claude listed as the sole contributor	36
claude listed alongside me	6
Me, correctly and alone	33
No contributor block returned	36

The 33 correct ones are the useful control. The same endpoint on the same account resolves me correctly elsewhere, so this is not a problem with how the sidebar works in general. It is wrong data cached against a specific set of repositories.

What I have already ruled out

1. No Co-Authored-By trailer exists in any commit in any of the 42 repositories, checked against both my local clones and the commits returned by the REST API.
2. No commit message contains the string "claude" or "anthropic".
3. No hidden refs. git ls-remote returns only HEAD and refs/heads/main. No tags, no refs/pull/*, and these repositories have zero pull requests.
4. No history rewrite, so this is not a stale cache left behind by a force push. Author date equals committer date on every commit.
5. Not an unregistered-email problem any more. My commit emails were initially not registered on my account. I added them, and the REST contributors endpoint immediately started resolving every commit to me. The sidebar did not change.
6. Not fixed by pushing. I pushed a real commit to tip-calculator-app after registering the emails. The REST data stayed correct and the sidebar still returns claude.

What I am asking

Is there a supported way to request a rebuild of the contributor cache for a repository? I have seen a few reports of this in previous discussions where the resolution was a GitHub-side refresh rather than anything the repository owner could do.

I opened a support ticket with the above and it was closed as out of scope for my plan, with a pointer back here, so this is the channel I have.

If someone has hit this and cleared it themselves, I would like to know what actually worked. I would rather not toggle 42 repositories private and public on a guess.

All 42 affected repositories (all under github.com/MrBlackvanta)

claude listed as the sole contributor:

blog-preview-card
chat-app-css-illustration
clipboard-landing-page
coding-bootcamp-testimonials-slider
contact-form
digital-bank-landing-page
dine-restaurant-website
faq-accordion
frontend-quiz-app
fylo-dark-theme-landing-page
fylo-data-storage-component
huddle-landing-page-with-a-single-introductory-section
insure-landing-page
intro-component-with-sign-up-form
job-listings-with-filtering
manage-landing-page
meet-landing-page
myteam-multi-page-website
news-homepage
newsletter-sign-up-with-success-message
password-generator-app
ping-single-column-coming-soon-page
pricing-component-with-toggle
project-tracking-intro-component
recipe-page
rest-countries-api-with-color-theme-switcher
results-summary-component
rock-paper-scissors-game
scoot-multi-page-website
single-price-grid-component
social-links-profile
social-media-dashboard-with-theme-switcher
testimonials-grid-section
time-tracking-dashboard
tip-calculator-app
url-shortening-api-landing-page

claude listed alongside me:

article-preview-component
base-apparel-coming-soon
bookmark-landing-page
four-card-feature-section
product-preview-card-component
qr-code-component

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