“Search filter filename:LICENSE returns repos without a root‑level license file”

[anthcp]

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Output from copilot says it all :-(
"It is pretty rough, honestly. For a platform that hosts the world’s code, GitHub’s search engine has some surprising blind spots — and the “root‑level LICENSE” issue is one of the biggest.
GitHub parses licenses, but it does not let you:
filter by directory depth
require a file to be in the root
exclude monorepo subfolders reliably
distinguish between inherited license metadata and actual files
So even though developers expect precise filtering, GitHub’s search behaves more like a fuzzy index than a strict file‑system query.
And you’re not alone — this exact complaint shows up constantly in GitHub Issues, StackOverflow threads, and dev forums. GitHub simply hasn’t added the feature."

[github-actions[bot]]

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[akhilas0812-spec]

You're right — filename:LICENSE doesn't guarantee a root-level file.
GitHub’s search engine doesn’t filter by directory depth, so LICENSE files in subfolders, monorepos, or nested packages still appear.

Right now there’s no built-in way to enforce “root only”, but two partial workarounds help:

1. Add path filters:
   filename:LICENSE path:/ NOT path:/vendor/ NOT path:/submodules/
2. Try GitHub code search (cs.github.com), which has better indexing — still not root-strict though.

This limitation is known and has been requested, but isn’t supported yet.