Admin: repeater items don't expand on chevron click, and the row label is always 'Item N'

[ruben-aguirre]

Two related repeater-field issues that bit me during a client demo prep. Filing together because they're both about the same surface area.

Bug 1: Repeater items don't expand when the chevron is clicked

In a collection with a repeater field that has existing items, clicking the chevron (∨) next to "Item 1", "Item 2", etc. does nothing. The item stays collapsed. No console error. No sub-fields appear. I've tried this on every repeater on the same content type (a custom home content type with services, why_items, featured_stats, process_steps repeaters, each with 3-5 seeded items). None of them expand.

Reproduced consistently across full reload + hard refresh.

Repro (against a fresh npm create emdash@latest blog-cloudflare scaffold):

1. Add a custom content type with a repeater field to seed/seed.json:

{
  "slug": "services",
  "label": "Services",
  "type": "repeater",
  "fields": [
    { "slug": "title", "type": "string", "required": true },
    { "slug": "description", "type": "text" }
  ]
}

2. Seed it with two or three items via the seed file.
3. Deploy + open the entry in the admin.
4. Try to click the chevron to expand any item. Nothing happens.

Bug 2: Repeater row label is always "Item 1", "Item 2", etc. — no apparent way to point at a sub-field

Even if Bug 1 is resolved and the items do expand, the collapsed row label shows the generic "Item 1 / 2 / 3" regardless of the sub-field values. For an editor trying to find the right service to edit in a list of 5+ items, that's a real friction point.

Most other CMSes with repeater-style fields (Payload, Sanity, Contentful, ACF) let the schema declare which sub-field acts as the row label. Couldn't find a documented option in Emdash for this — the docs at https://docs.emdashcms.com/reference/field-types/ don't have a section for the repeater field beyond listing it in the type table.

If there's an undocumented option (e.g. displayField, rowLabel, titleField), pointing at the right place in the seed schema reference would solve this. If there isn't yet, please consider adding one — the editing UX gap is real for any repeater with more than two items.

Environment

• emdash@0.14.0 / create-emdash@0.14.0
• blog-cloudflare template
• Deployed to Cloudflare Workers (Workers Standard plan)
• Tested in Chrome 130 on Windows 11

Impact

Bug 1 is blocking — repeater fields are functionally uneditable through the admin UI right now. The data is correct (emdash seed populated everything) but editors can't change any of the sub-fields after seeding.

Bug 2 is editing-UX polish — workable without a fix, painful with more than ~3 items.

Happy to record a screen capture or share more repro detail if useful.

[emdashbot]

The investigation bot could not reproduce this issue.

What was tried:

Demo: demos/simple (better-sqlite3 backend). The default seed has no repeater fields, so I added a home collection with a services repeater (sub-fields title: string, description: text) and a seeded entry with three items (Design / Engineering / Strategy). Booted via bgproc start -n demo -w -- pnpm --filter ./demos/simple dev, logged in with /_emdash/api/setup/dev-bypass, opened /_emdash/admin/content/home, clicked "Edit" on the seeded "Welcome" entry.

URL where the symptoms should appear: /_emdash/admin/content/home/<id> (the entry editor).

Bug 1 — repeater items don't expand on chevron click: NOT REPRODUCED. On a fresh load each seeded repeater item renders EXPANDED (sub-field inputs visible) with a down-chevron (∨) in the header. Clicking anywhere on the header row (including over the chevron) toggles collapse correctly: first click collapses (sub-fields disappear, header keeps the row label, chevron flips to >), second click on the same header re-expands. I verified both directions in sequence (snapshots step-2 → step-3 → step-4 confirm expanded → collapsed → expanded), with no console errors during the interactions. The header <div> in packages/admin/src/components/RepeaterField.tsx has onClick={onToggleCollapse}; only the drag-handle (DotsSixVertical) calls stopPropagation, so clicks on the chevron icon bubble up and work. I could not get the failure mode the reporter describes.

Bug 2 — row label is always "Item N": NOT REPRODUCED as stated. Each row in my repro showed the title sub-field value ("Design", "Engineering", "Strategy"), not "Item 1/2/3". RepeaterField.tsx derives the summary as subFields.find((sf) => sf.type === "string" || sf.type === "text") and uses that value, falling back to t\Item ${index + 1}`only when no string/text sub-field exists or that sub-field is empty. The reporter's example usedtitle(string) as the first sub-field, which would auto-label the row — matching what I saw. The "Item N" label would still surface for repeaters that have only numeric/boolean/select sub-fields (the reporter'sfeatured_statsexample would plausibly fit). There is no explicitrowLabel/displayField/titleField option in the field schema (packages/core/src/api/schemas/schema.ts repeaterSubFieldSchemaandfieldValidation`), so the row-label choice is implicit and undocumented — that part of the report is accurate as a docs/feature gap, but not as a behavioral bug for repeaters whose first sub-field is a string/text.

No runtime JS errors related to the repeater were observed in agent-browser console / errors during the steps. (There is a benign React 16/17 use-sync-external-store warning unrelated to this surface.) Possible reasons for the divergence from the reporter: they may have been on an older emdash@0.14.0 build that predates the auto-label and clickable-header behavior currently in main (CHANGELOG references PRs #679 and #807 around repeater work); they may have had a repeater with no string/text sub-fields (triggering the "Item N" fallback) and a separate environment-specific click-handling issue. Without their exact seed file or a video, I can't get to the same broken state on the current main.

Replayable transcript:

1. From repo root: bgproc start -n demo -w -- pnpm --filter ./demos/simple dev.
2. agent-browser open "http://localhost:4321/_emdash/api/setup/dev-bypass?redirect=/_emdash/admin" → dismiss welcome dialog.
3. agent-browser open "http://localhost:4321/_emdash/admin/content/home" → click the "Edit Welcome" action.
4. Snapshot: the three items render expanded with title-derived labels. Click the header generic [ref=e19] (the first item's header): the item collapses. Click it again: it re-expands.

If you can share a minimal reproduction (failing test, repo, or video), please add it and a maintainer can re-trigger the bot.

_{Run: https://github.com/emdash-cms/emdash/actions/runs/26637306655}