Back when they were tracking it, I would split a PR into as many commits as possible and put in a commit on the weekends too so it that it would show me committing 7 days/week while the tech lead would commit 2-3 days/week. Also I'd make sure to hold back the commits done in the WFO days and hammer them in on the WFH days. And I'd be extra sure to have more stuff in closer to performance review so it was an upwards trend.
One dude in my team would comment "LGTM" on each PR to boost PR comments.
Thankfully, management were not dumb and didn't associate bonuses or anything to it. They were used only to evaluate policies like how much to refactor and whether 2 meeting days were more efficient than daily meetings. Or checking on someone they suspected of quiet quitting. After we got the data, we just unsubscribed it
So you are on the right track of pulling info from your system. Continue to treat this as a consulting gig - work with them on metrics they can pull from your systems to give them the answers they really want. Depending on how easy they are to work with, and how open to change, suggest that they change their communication patterns, and do not promise timelines to stakeholders or customers. If they limit customer transparency to roadmaps and priorities, it is amazing how little they need to track from the devs. And in my experience, the increased autonomy that gives the dev team results in feaster delivery, anyway.
gregjor•10h ago