fix: lazy-load frontend panel assets on first toggle

[jackgranatowski]

Summary

Improves the frontend panel initialization by deferring asset loading until the user first toggles the design panel. When the panel assets haven't been loaded yet, clicking the "/ Design" button now navigates to the current URL with a ?slashed-frontend-panel query parameter, which triggers asset injection on page load. Once loaded, subsequent toggles use a custom DOM event to avoid page reloads.

This reduces initial page load overhead by only loading panel assets when needed, while maintaining a seamless UX after the first toggle.

Type

• fix
• feat
• docs
• chore / tooling

Checklist

• Conventional Commit messages (feat:, fix:, docs:, …)
• npm test passes
• npm run lint passes (stylelint + php -l)
• npm run verify passes (version metadata in sync)
• Generated artifacts not hand-edited (dist/, data/inventory.json, data/classes-hints.json come from update-framework / build:data)
• CHANGELOG.md updated under ## [Unreleased] (for user-facing changes)
• Built SPA assets committed if editor-app/admin-app source changed

Notes

The logic now checks for the presence of the slashed-frontend-panel query parameter to determine whether assets are already loaded:

• First toggle: Button href navigates to same URL with query param appended; no onclick handler
• Subsequent toggles: Button href is # with custom event dispatcher in onclick handler

This maintains backward compatibility while optimizing initial page load performance.

https://claude.ai/code/session_01DehHEfopxfkGpyN3tRmys8

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features
  • The “/ Design” admin-bar control now supports two behaviors: it can open the front-end panel directly when available, or reload the page with the panel enabled when needed.
  • When the panel is already loaded, the control toggles the overlay instantly without a page refresh.

[coderabbitai]

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Review details

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: ccd74ca1-ef9f-4402-8de2-02d62bd10608

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between c716122 and ea2c1eb.

📒 Files selected for processing (3)

• SLASHED-for-WP/admin-app/src/plugin-main.ts
• SLASHED-for-WP/assets/admin-app/app.js
• SLASHED-for-WP/includes/class-frontend-configurator.php

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The add_admin_bar_node method in class-frontend-configurator.php is updated to conditionally set the admin-bar Design node's href and onclick based on whether $_GET['slashed-frontend-panel'] is present, toggling via a custom DOM event when active or navigating with the query param when inactive.

Changes

Admin-bar Design node conditional toggle

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Conditional onclick/href and docblock SLASHED-for-WP/includes/class-frontend-configurator.php	Docblock expanded to describe two activation modes. add_admin_bar_node reads $_GET['slashed-frontend-panel'] and sets href="#" with a CustomEvent("slashed:toggle-overlay") dispatch when active, or sets href via add_query_arg with no onclick when inactive. A PHPCS ignore is placed on the $_GET access.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~10 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• codeslash-dev/SLASHED-Plugins#86: Both PRs modify add_admin_bar_node in class-frontend-configurator.php to control the Design admin-bar node behavior and frontend overlay triggering.
• codeslash-dev/SLASHED-Plugins#91: Both PRs gate frontend overlay behavior on the slashed-frontend-panel query parameter in class-frontend-configurator.php.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly matches the main change: lazy-loading frontend panel assets on first toggle.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	Docstring coverage is 100.00% which is sufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.
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.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch claude/frontend-panel-visibility-qnsbmh

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[qodo-code-review]

PR Summary by Qodo

Lazy-load frontend design panel assets on first toggle
🐞 Bug fix ✨ Enhancement 🕐 20-40 Minutes

Description

• Make the “/ Design” admin-bar button load overlay assets only on first use.
• Use URL query param for first activation; use a DOM event for subsequent toggles.
• Rebuild bundled admin-app assets to include latest overlay UI/layout changes.

Diagram

graph TD
  U(["Admin user"]) --> B["/ Design button"] --> D{"Panel param present?"}
  D -->|"No"| N["Navigate w/ param"] --> W["Frontend Configurator PHP"] --> A[("admin-app bundle")] --> O["Overlay panel"]
  D -->|"Yes"| E["Dispatch toggle event"] --> O
  subgraph Legend
    direction LR
    _u(["User"]) ~~~ _p["Process"] ~~~ _d{"Decision"} ~~~ _a[("Assets")]
  end

Loading

High-Level Assessment

The following are alternative approaches to this PR:

1. Always enqueue a tiny bootstrap script

• ➕ No full page reload needed on first toggle
• ➕ Can dynamically inject JS/CSS when user requests panel
• ➖ Adds additional script to every frontend page for capable users
• ➖ More complexity: script-loader + race conditions + error handling

2. Use wp_enqueue_scripts conditional on capability only

• ➕ Simplest behavior; no query param or navigation logic
• ➖ Always pays asset cost even when panel never used
• ➖ Worse TTFB/LCP on frontend for admins

Recommendation: Current approach is a good tradeoff: it keeps default frontend loads lean by gating enqueuing behind ?slashed-frontend-panel, while still providing a seamless post-load UX via event-based toggling. A bootstrap loader could avoid the first reload, but would increase complexity and still add baseline overhead to all eligible pages.

Files changed (3) +89 / -63

Bug fix (1) +18 / -3

class-frontend-configurator.phpMake admin-bar toggle lazy-load overlay assets via query param +18/-3

Make admin-bar toggle lazy-load overlay assets via query param

• Updates the “/ Design” admin-bar node to detect whether ?slashed-frontend-panel is present. If not present, the button navigates to the same URL with the query param to trigger asset enqueueing on load; if present, it uses a CustomEvent (slashed:toggle-overlay) to toggle without reloading.

SLASHED-for-WP/includes/class-frontend-configurator.php

Other (2) +71 / -60

app.jsRebuild admin-app bundle (overlay UI + toggle behavior support) +70/-59

Rebuild admin-app bundle (overlay UI + toggle behavior support)

• Updates the compiled admin-app JavaScript bundle to reflect the latest overlay application source changes. This includes the rebuilt overlay UI/layout adjustments mentioned in the commit message and ensures the runtime behavior aligns with the updated frontend activation flow.

SLASHED-for-WP/assets/admin-app/app.js

app.cssRebuild admin-app CSS bundle +1/-1

Rebuild admin-app CSS bundle

• Updates the compiled admin-app CSS bundle to stay in sync with the rebuilt JS/app sources. This is a generated artifact change expected from the asset rebuild.

SLASHED-for-WP/assets/admin-app/app.css

[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 1

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
In `@SLASHED-for-WP/includes/class-frontend-configurator.php`:
- Around line 117-123: The readiness check in the frontend configurator is using
the query parameter too early, which makes the admin-bar toggle link become a
no-op before the overlay listener is mounted. Update the logic in the frontend
configurator branch that sets the link target so it keeps a real navigation
fallback until the frontend is actually ready, or only returns false when a
client-side readiness flag indicates the `slashed:toggle-overlay` handler is
mounted. Use the existing frontend configurator path and the admin-bar link
setup that currently assigns `$href` and `$onclick` to locate the change.

🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

• Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
• Create a new PR with the fixes

---

ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: af27efc3-108c-4ab8-9163-b95dc183771e

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between f039b04 and c716122.

📒 Files selected for processing (3)

• SLASHED-for-WP/assets/admin-app/app.css
• SLASHED-for-WP/assets/admin-app/app.js
• SLASHED-for-WP/includes/class-frontend-configurator.php

[qodo-code-review]

Code Review by Qodo

🐞 Bugs (0) 📘 Rule violations (0) 📎 Requirement gaps (0)

Great, no issues found!

Qodo reviewed your code and found no material issues that require review