Excerpt and description fields: Use the regular layout in the DataForm post summary by ntsekouras · Pull Request #82444 · WordPress/gutenberg

ntsekouras · 2026-09-04T11:37:16Z

What?

Part of: #76076 (the excerpt field item under "Design tweaks")
Alternative to: #82423 (see #82423 (comment))

With the DataForm inspector, the excerpt field renders Add an excerpt as if it were a value when the excerpt is empty, with the same styling as a real excerpt. This is also problematic in cases the excerpt field would be rendered in DataViews, although that's not the case right now. The description fields of templates and patterns render nothing when empty, for the use case I mentioned, as it's also used in the site editor (DataViews).

#82423 keeps the panel layout and always shows the pencil. This PR tries the other option from that discussion and renders the excerpt and the template description fields inline with the regular layout, so what users see is the textarea with its placeholder. Per Joen's feedback the textareas start at 2 rows instead of 4.

The excerpt field also renders nothing when there is no value, same as #82423, since render is what DataViews would use.

Notes - Needs design feedback

The form gets longer and the "Learn more about manual excerpts" link is now always visible. Do we want to keep the link?
The label follows the regular layout's field label (uppercase and darker), which differs from the panel rows. Is this something we should try to address specifically here(overrides)? Should we consider how can we be consistent with labels between different DataForm layouts? Another way to go with this would be to remove the label altogether, kind of relying to the Learn more about manual excerpts↗ link to make the 'work' for users to understand this is the excerpt field? 🤔 I'm sharing a screenshot for that below:

This PR

Emtpy	With value

Trunk

Emtpy	With value

Testing Instructions

Enable the "Editor Inspector: Use DataForm" experiment.
Create a new post and open the Post tab in the sidebar. The excerpt should render as a textarea with the Add an excerpt placeholder.
Add an excerpt, save and reload. The value should persist.
Open a pattern in the post editor and a custom template in the site editor. Their description field should render the same way.
In Preferences uncheck Excerpt and check the field is hidden.
Everything else in the summary should work as before.

Use of AI Tools

Generated with Fable 5 and adjusted/reviewed manually.

Summary by CodeRabbit

Improvements
- Post excerpts now appear inline with a regular layout and top labels.
- Excerpt fields handle empty and non-empty content more consistently, without placeholder text when empty.
- Description, pattern description, and excerpt text areas are more compact, displaying two rows instead of four.
- Pattern descriptions and post excerpts can be edited directly in their text fields.
- Template descriptions now use a regular layout.

…m post summary

coderabbitai · 2026-09-04T11:38:25Z

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ℹ️ Recent review info

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packages/fields/CHANGELOG.md

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The change renders excerpt fields inline for default post forms and blocks, updates excerpt value handling, reduces textarea heights, and changes PHP and end-to-end tests to verify direct textbox interaction.

Changes

Inline summary fields

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Post-type layout configuration `lib/compat/wordpress-7.2/view-config-api.php`, `phpunit/view-config-api-test.php`	Default-form post types, `wp_block`, and `wp_template` use regular layouts for excerpt and description fields. PHPUnit assertions verify the excerpt layout and label position.
Field rendering and controls `packages/fields/src/fields/excerpt/index.tsx`, `packages/fields/src/fields/description/index.tsx`, `packages/fields/src/fields/pattern-description/index.tsx`, `packages/fields/CHANGELOG.md`	The excerpt field supports string and raw values, renders no content when empty, and uses two-row textareas. Description and pattern description textareas also use two rows. The changelog documents these updates.
Inline field end-to-end coverage `test/e2e/specs/editor/various/post-summary-dataform/post-summary.spec.js`, `test/e2e/specs/editor/various/post-summary-dataform/sidebar.spec.js`	Tests locate Description and Excerpt textboxes directly and verify editing, persistence, panel preferences, and visibility.

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to 72f9a

This update documents the inline summary-field behavior without introducing implementation changes in the reviewed increment. No merge-readiness risk is identified.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 66.67% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 9 functions across 7 files. (1 skipped: 1…	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: excerpt and description fields now use the regular layout in the DataForm post summary.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

Full details: Docstring Coverage

Explanation

Docstring coverage is 66.67% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 9 functions across 7 files. (1 skipped: 1 unsupported.)

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Commit unit tests in branch fields-excerpt-description-regular-layout

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github-actions · 2026-09-04T11:38:38Z

The following accounts have interacted with this PR and/or linked issues. I will continue to update these lists as activity occurs. You can also manually ask me to refresh this list by adding the props-bot label.

If you're merging code through a pull request on GitHub, copy and paste the following into the bottom of the merge commit message.

Co-authored-by: ntsekouras <ntsekouras@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: jasmussen <joen@git.wordpress.org>

To understand the WordPress project's expectations around crediting contributors, please review the Contributor Attribution page in the Core Handbook.

github-actions · 2026-09-04T12:00:58Z

🤖 PR meta 🤖

⚡ Performance

Show the results

Client side metrics exclude the server response time.

front-end-block-theme

Metric	`df15538`	trunk	% Change
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wpTotal	48.54 ms +8.55% -5.58%	47.95 ms +7.13% -6.36%	1.23%
wpMemoryUsage	7.54 MB +0% -0%	7.50 MB +0% -0%	0.54%
wpDbQueries	17 +0% -0%	17 +0% -0%	0%

front-end-classic-theme

Metric	`df15538`	trunk	% Change
timeToFirstByte	41.9 ms +11.1% -1.67%	42.25 ms +11.12% -4.38%	-0.83%
largestContentfulPaint	88 ms +4.55% -0%	88 ms +4.55% -4.55%	0%
lcpMinusTtfb	45.85 ms +1.53% -3.05%	44.25 ms +3.28% -2.71%	3.62%
wpBeforeTemplate	21.26 ms +17.17% -2.16%	21.23 ms +11.82% -3.01%	0.14%
wpTemplate	17.73 ms +3.1% -3.38%	17.44 ms +2.92% -3.1%	1.66%
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wpMemoryUsage	6.16 MB +0% -0%	6.12 MB +0% -0%	0.68%
wpDbQueries	14 +0% -0%	14 +0% -0%	0%

media-processing

Metric	`df15538`	trunk	% Change
mediaProcessingJpeg	412.78 ms +1.51% -0.92%	418.29 ms +0.68% -0.94%	-1.32%
mediaProcessingAvif	6369.3 ms +0.1% -0.19%	6368.66 ms +0.19% -0.1%	0.01%
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media-upload

Metric	`df15538`	trunk	% Change
jpegUploadProcessing	1438.19 ms +1.62% -0.65%	1455.47 ms +0.89% -0.83%	-1.19%
pngUploadProcessing	206.84 ms +2.21% -1.23%	220.49 ms +2.91% -3.49%	-6.19%
largeJpegUploadProcessing	1420.94 ms +0.51% -0.23%	1431.84 ms +1.38% -1.02%	-0.76%
multipleImageUploadProcessing	1604.36 ms +30.94% -0.27%	2042.91 ms +2.21% -21.96%	-21.47%

post-editor

Metric	`df15538`	trunk	% Change
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firstPaint	263.67 ms +5.23% -11.55%	240.38 ms +15.69% -4.73%	9.69%
domContentLoaded	1309.67 ms +3.2% -0.44%	1337.21 ms +2.34% -1.08%	-2.06%
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firstContentfulPaint	433.27 ms +4.08% -5.15%	444.85 ms +1.29% -1.41%	-2.6%
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type	21.04 ms +6.8% -19.58%	19.66 ms +8.19% -16.99%	7.02%
typeWithoutInspector	20.96 ms +11.45% -19.32%	20.97 ms +7.63% -19.79%	-0.05%
typeWithTopToolbar	22.04 ms +8.8% -11.8%	24.4 ms +6.52% -12.25%	-9.67%
typeContainer	9.48 ms +6.96% -6.12%	9.73 ms +10.48% -11.92%	-2.57%
focus	82.4 ms +4.88% -9.28%	87.71 ms +11.47% -15.44%	-6.05%
firstFocus	176.88 ms +0% -0%	185 ms +0% -0%	-4.39%
selectAll	630.75 ms +2.92% -4.18%	591.99 ms +7.27% -0.36%	6.55%
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inserterOpen	24.75 ms +4.16% -9.82%	23.66 ms +5.28% -6.68%	4.61%
inserterHover	3.39 ms +8.85% -11.5%	3.54 ms +11.02% -7.63%	-4.24%
inserterSearch	8.17 ms +14.08% -9.42%	8.86 ms +12.87% -16.59%	-7.79%
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wpDbQueries	54 +0% -1.85%	54 +0% -1.85%	0%

site-editor

Metric	`df15538`	trunk	% Change
serverResponse	540.71 ms +5.17% -2.87%	541.02 ms +3.44% -2.03%	-0.06%
firstPaint	260.08 ms +7.42% -9.24%	240.41 ms +18.17% -0.39%	8.18%
domContentLoaded	1434.83 ms +1.63% -0.9%	1405.23 ms +0.95% -0.93%	2.11%
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firstBlock	4561.61 ms +0.46% -1.46%	4479.74 ms +0.7% -0.99%	1.83%
type	19.91 ms +16.47% -19.54%	20.41 ms +10.49% -18.37%	-2.45%
navigate	104.09 ms +9.08% -4.81%	100.97 ms +13.84% -3.5%	3.09%
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loadPages	1262.16 ms +7.42% -5.81%	1189.19 ms +4.36% -2.35%	6.14%
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_{72f9a0a Run}

🏁 Flaky tests

Show the failures

Some tests passed with failed attempts. The failures may not be related to this commit but are still reported for visibility. See the documentation for more information.

should override reset styles and library styles in /test/e2e/specs/site-editor/styles.spec.js, passed after 1 failed attempt.

Error: apiRequestContext.get: socket hang up
Call log:
  - → GET http://localhost:8889/wp-admin/themes.php
    - user-agent: Playwright/1.62.1 (x64; ubuntu 24.04) node/20.20 CI/1
    - accept: */*
    - accept-encoding: gzip,deflate,br
    - cookie: wordpress_test_cookie=WP%20Cookie%20check; wordpress_23778236db82f19306f247e20a353a99=admin%7C1788695252%7C1lAmDMcdC1Uxq3giTx735xjrdmhklri7W96DLzKO9n8%7Cc870ded9a02afb7e90f1034b65f940ff287fb2a00aca9c49ee55308a3685d7d1; wordpress_logged_in_23778236db82f19306f247e20a353a99=admin%7C1788695252%7C1lAmDMcdC1Uxq3giTx735xjrdmhklri7W96DLzKO9n8%7Cb623b42bcb65786ebe62c46aeb7e3d837c96dd3e561278b9dfdc873ba1116dcd; wp-settings-time-1=1788523388

    at RequestUtils.activateTheme (/home/runner/work/gutenberg/gutenberg/packages/e2e-test-utils-playwright/src/request-utils/themes.ts:10:36)
    at /home/runner/work/gutenberg/gutenberg/test/e2e/specs/site-editor/styles.spec.js:17:22

_{72f9a0a Run}

jasmussen · 2026-09-07T06:15:15Z

Thanks for trying this. When he's able to catch up, I'd love @jameskoster's thoughts on this.

Two things in the meantime:

I see a scrollbar. Can the excerpt field just grow vertically rather than scroll?
We should not add the big blue help text link that wasn't there before. If we have to add information in this space, we can explore an InfoTip.

Excerpt and description fields: Use the regular layout in the DataFor…

da1ea9f

…m post summary

ntsekouras requested review from Mamaduka, jameskoster, jasmussen and oandregal September 4, 2026 11:37

ntsekouras self-assigned this Sep 4, 2026

ntsekouras added the [Type] Enhancement A suggestion for improvement. label Sep 4, 2026

ntsekouras requested a review from spacedmonkey as a code owner September 4, 2026 11:37

ntsekouras added Needs Design Feedback Needs general design feedback. [Feature] DataViews Work surrounding upgrading and evolving views in the site editor and beyond labels Sep 4, 2026

github-actions Bot added the [Package] Fields /packages/fields label Sep 4, 2026

ntsekouras mentioned this pull request Sep 4, 2026

Excerpt field: Render nothing when the excerpt is empty #82423

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72f9a0a

ntsekouras closed this Sep 8, 2026

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Excerpt and description fields: Use the regular layout in the DataForm post summary - #82444

Excerpt and description fields: Use the regular layout in the DataForm post summary#82444
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ntsekouras commented Sep 4, 2026 •

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Notes - Needs design feedback

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