Fine-grained PAT: target_name URL parameter visually pre-fills Resource Owner but token is created under personal account

[vanilevsky]

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Bug

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Hi team! 👋

I ran into an issue with the fine-grained PAT template URLs feature and wanted to share my findings — hopefully this helps!
If you know any workaround to get around this, I’d be glad to hear it.

Description

When navigating to the fine-grained PAT creation page with a pre-filled target_name parameter, the Resource Owner dropdown visually displays the specified organization, but the token is actually created under the personal account.

Steps to reproduce

1. Navigate to: https://github.com/settings/personal-access-tokens/new?target_name=<ORG_NAME>
2. Observe that the Resource Owner dropdown shows <ORG_NAME>
3. Fill in token name, description, expiration, permissions
4. Click "Generate token"
5. Result: Token is created under personal account (@username), not under <ORG_NAME>

Expected behavior

Token should be created with Resource Owner = <ORG_NAME>, matching the visual state of the dropdown.

Actual behavior

The target_name parameter updates the dropdown's visual/display state but does not initialize the underlying form state. The token is created under the personal account.

Workaround

After navigating via the prefill URL, manually re-select the organization in the Resource Owner dropdown (switch to another value, then back to the org). This forces the form state to sync with the visual state. Only then generate the token.

Environment

• Browser 1: Google Chrome 145.0.7632.117
• Browser 2: Arc 1.135.0 (75383), Chromium Engine 145.0.7632.110
• OS: macOS 26.2 (25C56), MacBook Pro 14-inch 2021, Apple M1 Pro
• Reproduced on both browsers — likely a React/SPA state management issue, not browser-specific

References

• Documentation for target_name parameter:
  https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/keeping-your-account-and-data-secure/managing-your-personal-access-tokens#pre-filling-fine-grained-personal-access-token-details-using-url-parameters
• Feature changelog (August 2025): https://github.blog/changelog/2025-08-26-template-urls-for-fine-grained-pats-and-updated-permissions-ui/

Thanks for looking into this! Great feature overall — just this small hiccup with the pre-fill. ���

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