## 🔍 What Is This Issue?

Some accounts experienced a platform defect where approximately 20 or more LLM (AI Visibility) projects appeared automatically — projects that were never manually created by the user. These ghost projects, sometimes called **zombie projects**, had two key characteristics:

- They reappeared after being deleted
- They silently consumed HDC credits and quota slots for weeks or months

This was caused by a stale internal reference (a **llmv\_id pointer**) that incorrectly linked orphaned LLM projects to deleted Site Explorer projects. In some cases, the same domain was also being tracked twice, which further inflated quota usage.



## ✅ Is This Issue Already Fixed?

Yes. Search Atlas engineering has confirmed that the following fixes are now live:

- Orphaned LLM projects have been cleaned up for all affected accounts
- The stale pointer defect causing zombie projects to reappear has been resolved
- Incorrect project usage counts and inflated quota figures caused by duplicate domain tracking have been corrected

You do **not** need to take any action to trigger these fixes — they were applied automatically at the platform level.



## 📊 How to Verify Your Account Is Now Clean

After the fix, you can confirm your account is in a healthy state by reviewing your AI Visibility projects:

1. Navigate to your AI Visibility (LLM) projects section in the platform
2. Review the list of projects shown. You should only see domains you intentionally set up
3. Check that your quota usage now accurately reflects only your active, real projects
4. If a project you did not create is still visible, do **not** attempt to delete it repeatedly — instead, contact support immediately (see below)

## ⚠️ What If You Still See Ghost Projects or Incorrect Quota?

Although the fix has been deployed, if your account still shows:

- LLM projects you never created
- Projects that reappear after deletion
- Quota showing as fully consumed with no active reports visible
- An incorrect project count that does not match what you see on screen

…then your account may still be affected and requires manual review by our engineering team. **Do not attempt to repeatedly delete the projects**, as this will not resolve the underlying pointer issue and may complicate the investigation.



## 💡 What Caused the Credits Loss?

The orphaned projects were consuming HDC credits and occupying quota slots even though they were invisible or appeared to be inactive. This happened because the system's internal project references were not properly cleaned up when the original Site Explorer projects they were linked to were deleted. Engineering ticket **SPE-652** was raised to address the root cause, and all related cleanup tasks are now marked