WOOA7S-1495: add Authors widget backed by Jetpack Stats

[Nikschavan]

Proposed changes

Ports the Authors widget from the Jetpack Stats module into the Premium Analytics dashboard, backed by the Jetpack Stats API.

• data package: adds a stats-fetch API client that goes through the stats-admin proxy (/jetpack/v4/stats-app/sites/{blog_id}/stats/{resource}), plus statsQuery/statsTopAuthorsQuery query builders and useStatsTopAuthors/useStatsBlogId hooks. The blog ID is resolved once from /jetpack/v4/connection/data and cached for the page lifetime; queries use skipToken while the blog ID or report date is unresolved.
• widgets-toolkit: adds AuthorsWidget (leaderboard chart of top authors by views with comparison support) and a buildTopAuthorsData helper, with loading/refetching overlays and empty/error states.
• premium-analytics plugin: registers the jpa/authors dashboard widget (render entry, widget.json, widget.ts with a configurable max attribute). The render entry defaults to an all-time report range until the host can pass the site launch date.
• query client provider: adds a withDevtools prop so per-widget providers don't each render React Query devtools.
• widget-dashboard: insets picker previews with padding instead of scaling, so preview content clears the selection checkbox.

Related product discussion/links

• WOOA7S-1495

Does this pull request change what data or activity we track or use?

No.

Testing instructions

• Set up a Jetpack-connected site with the Premium Analytics plugin active.
• Go to the Premium Analytics dashboard and open the widget picker.
• Verify the picker previews are inset with padding and the content clears the selection checkbox.
• Add the Authors widget.
• Verify it renders a leaderboard of top authors by views, sourced from Jetpack Stats (check the network tab for requests to /jetpack/v4/stats-app/sites/{blog_id}/stats/top-authors).
• Change the Maximum authors attribute and verify the list respects the limit.
• On a site with no traffic, verify the empty state copy renders instead of the chart.

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[Nikschavan]

Temporary hardcoded long date range to view the data in the widget, until we have date range picker in the dashboard

[jp-launch-control]

Code Coverage Summary

This PR did not change code coverage!

That could be good or bad, depending on the situation. Everything covered before, and still is? Great! Nothing was covered before? Not so great. 🤷

Full summary · PHP report

[Nikschavan]

@claude Review the PR please

[claude]

Claude finished @Nikschavan's task in 3m 43s —— View job

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PR Review — Authors widget

Reviewed the 11 files in this commit. Note: the data package (stats-fetch, statsTopAuthorsQuery, useStatsTopAuthors), the withDevtools provider prop, and the widget-picker CSS changes described in the PR body are not in this commit's diff (they already exist in trunk). So this review covers the toolkit widget + helper + render entry only. Overall this is clean, well-documented, and closely follows the established widget conventions (loading/refetch/error/empty handling, LeaderboardChart with emptyState* props, render/widget.json/widget.ts trio). A few things worth addressing:

🐛 Correctness / i18n

1. "Untracked authors" never shows the translated string — getAuthorLabel in build-top-authors-data.ts:23-27 falls back to __( 'Untracked authors' ) only when author.label is empty. But the processing layer already substitutes a value at processing/stats/top-authors.ts:26:

label: item.name || 'Untracked Authors',

So by the time data reaches buildTopAuthorsData, label is always a non-empty string, and authors with no name render the untranslated 'Untracked Authors' (capital A) — the translated fallback in the helper is effectively dead code. Make the untracked label translatable and consistent in one place (probably the processing layer, or normalize in the helper by treating the sentinel as "untracked"). Fix this →

2. Authors are merged by display label — summarizeAuthors keys the Map by label and sets id: existing?.id ?? label. Two distinct authors sharing a display name will be collapsed into one leaderboard row with summed views. Likely rare, but if the API exposes a stable author id, prefer keying on that for both dedup and id. Low severity — worth a comment acknowledging the trade-off if you keep it.

🔧 Type safety

3. reportParams as StatsReportParams cast (authors-widget.tsx:54) — this is the only widget in the toolkit that casts reportParams (others pass it straight to their hook). The context types it as ReportParams, while StatsReportParams = ReportParams & StatsQueryParams. The extra StatsQueryParams fields are all optional so it's not unsafe at runtime today, but the cast suppresses checking. Cleaner would be to type useStatsTopAuthors's param as ReportParams (since it only adds optional fields) so call sites don't need the assertion. Same goes for the primary.data as StatsTopAuthorsReport casts — if the hook can be made generic it avoids the assertions.

📝 Minor / consistency

4. widget.json description over-promises — "Top authors by views, with their most viewed posts." The widget only renders the authors leaderboard; the nested children (posts) that the processing layer builds are never displayed. Either drop "with their most viewed posts" or wire up the posts UI.

5. max is a free-text attribute (widget.ts:18, type: 'text') — toPositiveInt safely falls back to 7 for non-numeric/negative input, so no breakage, but the user gets silent correction with no feedback. If the attribute framework supports a number/min input, that'd be a nicer UX. Non-blocking.

💬 Answers to your inline questions

• constants.ts temporary stats endpoint → proxy: Agreed, and this matches the documented migration path — AGENTS.md shows stats-app/* maps onto the stats/jetpack-stats proxy prefixes already allowlisted in PREFIX_CONFIG, so the switch should be a config-only change. Good to flag.
• Should conversion be backend or here? (processing/stats-top-authors): Keeping normalization client-side is consistent with every other stats widget (processing/stats/* all normalize on the frontend). I'd keep it here for consistency unless payload size becomes a concern — splitting one widget to the backend would fragment the pattern.
• Hardcoded date range (render.tsx): Fine as a clearly-marked TODO. One note: getDefaultReportParams builds to from new Date() in local time, which is what you want for an all-time view.

✅ Nice touches

• Division-by-zero guard (Math.max( …, 1 )) and comparison alignment by label in buildTopAuthorsData.
• The isInitialLoading = ( isLoading || primary.isPending ) && ! hasData comment explaining the skipToken disabled window.
• Changelog entry present and correctly typed.

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• Read changed files & diff
• Review widgets-toolkit (AuthorsWidget, build-top-authors-data)
• Review premium-analytics widget (render, widget.json/ts)
• Answer inline questions
• Post feedback

Note: the widget-dashboard CSS / data-package / devtools changes from the PR description aren't in this commit, so they weren't reviewed here.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Adds a new Authors widget to the Jetpack Premium Analytics dashboard, using the Jetpack Stats “top-authors” endpoint and a new widget/toolkit implementation to render a leaderboard with comparison support.

Changes:

• Register new jpa/authors widget metadata (type/module JSON) with a configurable max attribute and a render entry using WidgetRoot.
• Add AuthorsWidget to the widgets-toolkit plus a buildTopAuthorsData helper to transform Stats responses into leaderboard chart data.
• Export the new widget/helper from the widgets-toolkit public entrypoints and add a changelog entry.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 11 out of 11 changed files in this pull request and generated 5 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
projects/packages/premium-analytics/widgets/authors/widget.ts	Defines the widget type (name/title/icon) and its max attribute.
projects/packages/premium-analytics/widgets/authors/widget.json	Widget picker metadata (title/description/category).
projects/packages/premium-analytics/widgets/authors/render.tsx	Render entry wiring WidgetRoot + AuthorsWidget, including a wide default report range.
projects/packages/premium-analytics/widgets/authors/package.json	Declares per-widget package dependencies.
projects/packages/premium-analytics/packages/widgets-toolkit/src/widgets/index.ts	Exports AuthorsWidget from the widgets toolkit widget barrel.
projects/packages/premium-analytics/packages/widgets-toolkit/src/widgets/authors/index.ts	Authors widget module re-export.
projects/packages/premium-analytics/packages/widgets-toolkit/src/widgets/authors/authors-widget.tsx	Main widget component: fetches top authors and renders a leaderboard with comparison/empty/loading/error handling.
projects/packages/premium-analytics/packages/widgets-toolkit/src/index.ts	Exposes AuthorsWidget from the toolkit public API.
projects/packages/premium-analytics/packages/widgets-toolkit/src/helpers/index.ts	Exports buildTopAuthorsData helper.
projects/packages/premium-analytics/packages/widgets-toolkit/src/helpers/build-top-authors-data.ts	Converts Stats “top-authors” report(s) into LeaderboardChart-ready data with deltas/shares.
projects/packages/premium-analytics/changelog/update-pa-authors-widget	Changelog entry for introducing the Authors widget.

[chihsuan]

Nice work on the port! @Nikschavan

A couple of things before merge:

• This PR doesn't include a Storybook story — AGENTS.md asks every widget to ship one. Could you add it?
• The description mentions a withDevtools prop and a picker-preview change, but I don't see those in the diff. Did they land separately on rebase? Mind updating the description to match?

Also left a couple of inline comments.

[chihsuan]

Could we move AuthorsWidget into widgets/authors/render.tsx? widgets-toolkit/src/widgets/* is for the legacy (unmigrated) widgets and not to use them as templates. The newer stats ports keep the body in widgets/<name>/render.tsx e.g. locations defines a LocationsInner there or #49568 we defines a TopPostsLeaderboard.

[Nikschavan]

Moved it. The body now lives in widgets/authors/render.tsx as a local AuthorsLeaderboard component, mirroring LocationsInner and the TopPostsLeaderboard in #49568, and I dropped the old widgets-toolkit/src/widgets/authors/ entirely. The buildTopAuthorsData helper (and its test) moved into the widget folder too, so the toolkit barrels no longer carry anything authors-specific. render.tsx#L70

[kangzj]

Maybe we could coordinate those changes into https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/blob/trunk/projects/packages/premium-analytics/packages/data/src/processing/stats/top-authors.ts, so that there's no need for more mappings?

[chihsuan]

Could toDateString defer to date-fns? It hand-rolls format(date, 'yyyy-MM-dd') I think date-fns or the datetime package should provide similar feature.

[chihsuan]

Non-blocking - since this is probably not an issue once we pass the launch date to the widget.

It looks like getDefaultReportParams returns from: 2000-01-01, to: today, interval: 'day', which maps to period=day with days≈9673 plus summarize:1. That would ask WPCOM to summarize roughly 9,600 daily buckets. It should likely be fine since our dev sites probably do not have much data, but I wanted to flag it anyway.