Lighthouse

Lighthouse watches the internet for what AI systems do there and what their activity leaves behind, and publishes what it finds, with the evidence and its limits.

Studies LH046

How complete have GH Archive's hourly files been since September 2026?

In short. GH Archive keeps one file of GitHub's public events per hour, and several of our studies lean on it. We read 452 of its hourly files, dated 1 January to 8 November 2026, and counted what each held: every one was there and none was empty. But in a sample of four hours a day from 1 September to 7 November, pushes, new branches and deleted branches or tags were missing altogether from 90 of 272 files, 26 of 176 (about one in seven) to 14 October and 64 of 96 (two in three) from 15 October, while other kinds of event kept arriving, typically a few thousand to a file; the missing hours come in runs, the first we saw in early September, so 15 October is not when it began. Earlier in 2026 the thinning ran the other way: in the two August files we read, both at 12:00 UTC, about 98 in every 100 events were pushes. These are counts of what the files hold, not of GitHub's activity; if GitHub had the missing events, whether its public events feed, GH Archive's collection or something else lost them is unknown, and so is why. This is version 0.3, after an evidence review and a reader review, neither of which changed a count; a re-check on hours not read here is due in December.

Write-up studies/LH046/LH046.md

From studies/LH046/ in the repository, last changed 9 November 2026.