[API bug] /repos/{owner}/{repo}/commits/{ref} endpoint doesn't accept tag ref but the docs indicate it should

[callumgare]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

API

Body

I believe I've found a bug with the GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/commits/{ref} endpoint. In the description for the "ref" path parameter it says:

The commit reference. Can be a commit SHA, branch name (heads/BRANCH_NAME), or tag name (tags/TAG_NAME). For more information, see "Git References" in the Git documentation.

However when I try using a tag ref I get an error:

> gh api /repos/InfoxchangeTS/iss-api-v4/commits/tags%2Fv20260303
{
  "message": "No commit found for SHA: tags/v20260303",
  "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/rest/commits/commits#get-a-commit",
  "status": "422"
}
gh: No commit found for SHA: tags/v20260303 (HTTP 422)

I know this tag definally exists and I can confirm it because weirdly the ref is resolved correctly when using the /status endpoint:

> gh api /repos/InfoxchangeTS/iss-api-v4/commits/tags%2Fv20260303/status
{
  "state": "pending",
  "statuses": [],
  "sha": "7b641b9358cd6a0b8c6cacd7ac064d48be827f0a",
[...]

Also I get 422 response even when searching for a validly formatted but non-existing SHA hash. Which seems odd since I would have thought a 404 makes more sense.

Also also it would be nice if the docs indicated if slashes in ref should be escaped or not. From trial an error it seems to work either way but it would be nice to have some confirmation about that.

Thanks for looking at this!

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