Fall back to the GitHub owner avatar when no local project icon resolves

[vitalyiegorov]

Pitch: if a project has no local icon but lives on GitHub, show the avatar GitHub itself uses for that repository — instead of a wall of identical letter glyphs.

The problem

Most projects are clones of GitHub repos. When they don't ship a favicon (most don't), the sidebar, tabs, and command palette all fall back to the same generic letter avatar. GitHub has no per-repo icon — the image GitHub itself displays for a repository in every list is the owner's avatar. We render nothing where an identity already exists.

Repo-specific artwork keeps coming from the project (t3.json iconPath, the settings picker, local favicons); this fills only the "nothing found, nothing selected" gap.

What exists today

ProjectFaviconResolver.resolvePath already walks: settings path → t3.json iconPath → well-known files → <link rel="icon"> scrape. Null → letter glyph. And RepositoryIdentityResolver already parses and caches git remote -v into owner/repo.

The feature is the gap between two services that already exist.

Proposal — implemented in #8747

Append one step when everything above returns null:

1. Identity says github.com → else stop.
2. Disk cache under the state dir keyed by the parsed owner/repo: hit → one stat, serve it. Miss → single-flight GET of https://github.com/<owner>.png — the avatar the repository page itself displays, not the rate-limited API — 5s timeout, 1 MiB cap.
3. Commit is an atomic rename of a temp file, so a partially written image can never be served. A miss file carrying its own epoch remembers "no avatar" (404, private repo, oversized body) for 7 days.
4. Transport failures, timeouts, and transient responses return null without a marker — one blip never hides an icon for a week.
5. AssetAccess serves managed cache paths through the existing project-favicon-external claims, so clients never call github.com. No contract, UI, or mobile changes.

Priority: settings override → t3.json iconPath → well-known files → link scrape → GitHub avatar → generic.

Why nothing else changes

Only projects that show the generic glyph today. Override, t3.json, well-known files, and the link scrape all win first. Local discovery is untouched.

Performance — designed with #7536, not against it

One fetch per repository, ever: hits and fresh negatives answer without the permit, concurrent misses single-flight into one request. Reconnect hydration storms produce zero extra requests; steady state is zero network.

Prove-out

1. github remote, no local icon → avatar served; second request never re-fetches
2. non-github remote → no network call
3. local icon exists → step never runs
4. 404/timeout/429 → null, no error; only 404 is remembered, for 7 days
5. two worktrees, same repo → one fetch

Related

• [Feature]: Pick up project icons more reliably outside React apps #4304 — origin of the idea (comments)
• Uncached project favicon discovery amplifies reconnect hydration into slow RPCs and disconnects #7536 — resolver caching constraint this design respects
• [Bug]: favicon requests send private link hosts to Google #5843 / fix: stop favicon requests for private link hosts on web and mobile #5838 — privacy direction this follows (server-side fetch, no client third-party requests)
• monorepo projects do not resolve nested app favicons #1020 — nested monorepo favicons; the settings picker remains the answer there, this fills only the nothing-found gap

[juliusmarminge]

feels unnecessary... there are so many ways to resolve and set your own icon that i dont see why i would want my github avatar as one??