Use the GitLab project avatar as the automatic project icon

[akkrat]

Problem

A GitLab-hosted project with no icon file in the repository falls back to a monogram, even though GitLab stores an avatar for every project. Many repositories (mobile apps, services, libraries) have no web favicon, so that avatar is often the only artwork the project has.

Proposal

Add one last step to automatic icon detection: if no local icon resolves and the repository is on GitLab, use the avatar set on that GitLab project.

• Precedence is unchanged. A chosen icon, t3.json iconPath, well-known files and declared icons all win. The avatar only replaces the monogram.
• Project avatar only. No group or owner fallback. This differs from Fall back to the GitHub owner avatar when no local project icon resolves #8745: GitLab has a per-project avatar, so the image is the project's own, not its owner's. It follows the GitLab suggestion in [Feature]: Pick up project icons more reliably outside React apps #6799.
• No new setup. The image is fetched with glab api projects/:fullpath/avatar (GitLab 16.9+), reusing the existing GitLab CLI integration, so private and self-hosted instances work wherever glab is signed in. glab is never run for other hosts.
• Cheap. Results are cached in the state directory and rechecked daily; failures retry after ten minutes.
• Server-only. Web, desktop and mobile get it through the existing project-favicon asset route.

On the point raised in #8745: an icon can already be set by hand, but that is manual work for every project. Teams on GitLab already maintain this artwork, and it is project-specific, so it is a better default than a monogram.

Before / after

Same checkout of gitlab-org/cli (no icon file in the repository), on main and on the branch:

Before	After

Implementation

A working implementation is on akkrat/t3code feat/gitlab-project-avatar-icon: a cached GitLabProjectAvatarResolver service, a GitLabCli.getProjectAvatar method, the final fallback step in ProjectFaviconResolver, and the asset route accepting the cache directory. It has focused tests and was checked end to end against gitlab.com.

I can open a PR if the direction and scope work for you, and can put it behind a setting if you prefer it opt-in.

Implemented with Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code.