A GitHub profile calendar groups attributed contributions by day. It can cover many years, but the result depends on GitHub’s contribution rules and the repositories still visible to the account.

What counts as GitHub contribution history?

GitHub’s contribution model can include commits, pull requests, issues and pull request reviews that meet its attribution and repository rules. Private activity may appear only as anonymized totals when private contributions are enabled. Repository and organization visibility also affects what a connected tool can inspect.

Gitrospective records the annual calendars and contribution categories exposed to the connected account. Restricted totals stay separate because GitHub does not reveal a project name for those contributions.

Why can old GitHub contributions be missing?

  • The commit email is not associated with the expected account.
  • The work lives on a branch or repository that does not meet GitHub’s contribution rules.
  • A private organization limits what its activity reveals.
  • The repository was deleted, transferred or made inaccessible.
  • History was rewritten and the original commits are no longer reachable.

A blank day means that GitHub returned no attributed contribution for that date.

The Events API only covers recent activity

GitHub events are a recent activity stream. Gitrospective queries the GraphQL contribution collection one calendar year at a time for the historical view. Repository data supplies the project context available to the connected account.

How to recover more context

  1. Connect the GitHub account that owns the commits.
  2. Check the profile setting for private contribution totals.
  3. Connect GitLab if company projects were hosted there.
  4. Scan local clones that may still contain deleted or migrated repositories.

The local Git guide lists the metadata sent by the CLI.

From green squares to a developer timeline

Gitrospective keeps the calendar next to repository and organization data. You can use those dates to prepare a developer year in review or find the months when a particular project was active.