Suggest mode 1/9: editor intent (edit/suggest/view) and experiment gate

[adamsilverstein]

Part of #73411

What's in this PR

Adds the session-scoped editor intent state (private setEditorIntent
action / getEditorIntent selector), the Edit / Suggest / View switcher in
the editor options menu, Google Docs convention keyboard shortcuts, and a
read-only view intent via isPreviewMode. The Suggestion Mode experiment
flag and the gate helpers (isSuggestionModeEnabled / useCanSuggest) land
here so every later layer gates on the same predicate. No suggestion
capture or storage yet.

The view intent's read-only contract is enforced here too, in the layer
that promises it: preview mode is added to the memoized insertion
selectors' dependants so flipping it at runtime invalidates their cached
answers, the writing flow's cross-block input handling bails out while
the canvas is a preview, and the Block Inserter toggle is disabled (an
open inserter is closed on the way in). This was originally #81661 on top
of the stack and moved down here so it can be reviewed next to the intent
it belongs to.

Screenshot

The Edit / Suggest / View switcher in the editor Options menu, with the Google Docs style shortcuts alongside each mode:

Mode group in the editor Options menu showing Editing, Suggesting and Viewing

Testing

This is one layer of the stack. To exercise the whole feature, #78994 bundles every layer into one branch and builds it in Playground:

👉 https://playground.wordpress.net/gutenberg.html?pr=78994

Enable Gutenberg > Experiments > Collaboration > Suggestion Mode, then follow the walkthrough in #73411, which also explains how to review the stack layer by layer.

---

Suggest mode stack

This rebuilds the manually-stacked Suggest mode work (#73411) as a GitHub Stack of 9 small, independently reviewable PRs, each building on the one below it:

1. #80427 - editor intent (edit/suggest/view) + experiment gate
2. #80428 - suggestion storage, REST controller, provider
3. #80429 - block-level capture (attribute + structural)
4. #80430 - inline marker primitive
5. #80431 - inline suggestion operations
6. #80432 - review UI (Apply/Reject sidebar + summary)
7. #80433 - inline live wiring
8. #82047 - architecture documentation
9. #82048 - end-to-end test suite

Each follow up fix now sits in the layer that owns the code it changes, rather than piling onto the top of the stack. The whole feature can be exercised end-to-end via the combined testing branch #78994 (Playground). Behind the "Suggestion Mode" experiment (Gutenberg > Experiments).

---

AI Use

Code and description both written with 🤖 Claude Code. I will review and test.

[github-actions]

Size Change: +1.92 kB (+0.02%)

Total Size: 7.91 MB

📦 View Changed

Filename	Size	Change
build/scripts/block-editor/index.min.js	478 kB	+31 B (+0.01%)
build/scripts/editor/index.min.js	582 kB	+1.89 kB (+0.33%)

_{compressed-size-action}

[github-actions]

Flaky tests detected in 5df3684.
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.

🔍 Workflow run URL: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/actions/runs/33116177758
📝 Reported tests:

refuses the drop and uploads nothing in /test/e2e/specs/editor/various/single-file-placeholder-drop.spec.js, passed after 1 failed attempt.

Error: expect(received).toHaveLength(expected)

Expected length: 0
Received length: 2
Received array:  [{"_links": {"about": [{"href": "http://localhost:8889/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}], "author": [{"embeddable": true, "href": "http://localhost:8889/wp-json/wp/v2/users/1"}], "collection": [{"href": "http://localhost:8889/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}], "curies": [{"href": "https://api.w.org/{rel}", "name": "wp", "templated": true}], "replies": [{"embeddable": true, "href": "http://localhost:8889/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=106"}], "self": [{"href": "http://localhost:8889/wp-json/wp/v2/media/106", "targetHints": {"allow": ["GET", "POST", "PUT", "PATCH", "DELETE"]}}], "wp:attached-to": [{"embeddable": true, "href": "http://localhost:8889/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/104", "id": 104, "post_type": "post"}]}, "alt_text": "", "author": 1, "caption": {"rendered": ""}, "class_list": ["post-106", "attachment", "type-attachment", "status-inherit", "hentry", "entry"], "comment_status": "open", "date": "2026-08-27T21:13:31", "date_gmt": "2026-08-27T21:13:31", "description": {"rendered": "<p class=\"attachment\"><a href='http://localhost:8889/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK-1.png'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"10\" height=\"10\" src=\"http://localhost:8889/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK-1.png\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"\" style=\"width:100%;height:100%;max-width:10px;\" /></a></p>
"}, "featured_media": 0, "filename": "10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK-1.png", "filesize": 80, "guid": {"rendered": "http://localhost:8889/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK-1.png"}, "id": 106, "link": "http://localhost:8889/?attachment_id=106", "media_details": {"file": "2026/08/10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK-1.png", "filesize": 80, "height": 10, "image_meta": {"alt": "", "aperture": "0", "camera": "", "caption": "", "copyright": "", "created_timestamp": "0", "credit": "", "focal_length": "0", "iso": "0", "keywords": [], "orientation": "0", "shutter_speed": "0", "title": ""}, "sizes": {}, "width": 10}, "media_type": "image", "meta": [], "mime_type": "image/png", "modified": "2026-08-27T21:13:31", "modified_gmt": "2026-08-27T21:13:31", "ping_status": "closed", "post": 104, "slug": "10x10_e2e_test_image_z9t8jk-2", "source_url": "http://localhost:8889/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK-1.png", "status": "inherit", "template": "", "title": {"rendered": "10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK"}, "type": "attachment"}, {"_links": {"about": [{"href": "http://localhost:8889/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}], "author": [{"embeddable": true, "href": "http://localhost:8889/wp-json/wp/v2/users/1"}], "collection": [{"href": "http://localhost:8889/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}], "curies": [{"href": "https://api.w.org/{rel}", "name": "wp", "templated": true}], "replies": [{"embeddable": true, "href": "http://localhost:8889/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=105"}], "self": [{"href": "http://localhost:8889/wp-json/wp/v2/media/105", "targetHints": {"allow": ["GET", "POST", "PUT", "PATCH", "DELETE"]}}], "wp:attached-to": [{"embeddable": true, "href": "http://localhost:8889/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/104", "id": 104, "post_type": "post"}]}, "alt_text": "", "author": 1, "caption": {"rendered": ""}, "class_list": ["post-105", "attachment", "type-attachment", "status-inherit", "hentry", "entry"], "comment_status": "open", "date": "2026-08-27T21:13:31", "date_gmt": "2026-08-27T21:13:31", "description": {"rendered": "<p class=\"attachment\"><a href='http://localhost:8889/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK.png'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"10\" height=\"10\" src=\"http://localhost:8889/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK.png\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"\" style=\"width:100%;height:100%;max-width:10px;\" /></a></p>
"}, "featured_media": 0, "filename": "10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK.png", "filesize": 80, "guid": {"rendered": "http://localhost:8889/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK.png"}, "id": 105, "link": "http://localhost:8889/?attachment_id=105", "media_details": {"file": "2026/08/10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK.png", "filesize": 80, "height": 10, "image_meta": {"alt": "", "aperture": "0", "camera": "", "caption": "", "copyright": "", "created_timestamp": "0", "credit": "", "focal_length": "0", "iso": "0", "keywords": [], "orientation": "0", "shutter_speed": "0", "title": ""}, "sizes": {}, "width": 10}, "media_type": "image", "meta": [], "mime_type": "image/png", "modified": "2026-08-27T21:13:31", "modified_gmt": "2026-08-27T21:13:31", "ping_status": "closed", "post": 104, "slug": "10x10_e2e_test_image_z9t8jk", "source_url": "http://localhost:8889/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK.png", "status": "inherit", "template": "", "title": {"rendered": "10x10_e2e_test_image_z9T8jK"}, "type": "attachment"}]
    at /home/runner/work/gutenberg/gutenberg/test/e2e/specs/editor/various/single-file-placeholder-drop.spec.js:71:45

[jasmussen]

Testing just this one in isolation, I get the same error noted here. Let me know if I'm doing something wrong.

[adamsilverstein]

Testing just this one in isolation, I get the same error noted here. Let me know if I'm doing something wrong.

this should be fixed now @jasmussen - thanks for letting me know it was broken!

[jasmussen]

Took it for a spin:

Bolding doesn't create a note. I understand that's part of a separate PR in the stack, that's fine, the focus of this one is the dropdown, this one:

I think it makes sense insofar as we refactored appearance and panels to make room for this. If that becomes controversial once landed, we can invert that: restore appearance toggles direcly, and put suggest modes inside a flyout. I prefer what this branch does, but I always want to think of contingencies.

The larger motivation: we are still doing that careful dance of adding features but balancing prominence with readiness. The truth is that longer term, edit/suggest/view probably deserve their own dropdown, a la this:

But that's not near term.

One thing though: we could start without view. There's an aspect of user roles in WordPress, if you're just a contributor you might have view. Or if in the future we build a "share" link, we could assign roles to the shared URL. That's all part of the collaborative future, and what I'm suggesting is that if "view" in its present state is low value, we can postpone it.

[adamsilverstein]

Thanks as always for testing and the feedback @jasmussen.

One thing though: we could start without view. There's an aspect of user roles in WordPress, if you're just a contributor you might have view. Or if in the future we build a "share" link, we could assign roles to the shared URL. That's all part of the collaborative future, and what I'm suggesting is that if "view" in its present state is low value, we can postpone it.

Interesting idea. Viewing mode is fairly distinct from suggesting mode and removing it might significantly reduce complexity of the overall stack. Let me research that further and see what the impact of removing it would be.

[adamsilverstein]

I wanted to see how much it would actually save so I asked Claude to review:

Claude went through the stack to size up what View costs:

View accounts for roughly 700 of the stack's ~53k changed lines, and only about 200 of those are production code. Almost all of it lives in this first PR: the preview-mode toggle, guards that refuse sidebar edits and undo/redo while viewing, the View branch of the code editor check, the menu item and shortcut, plus a 322-line e2e spec.

The bigger win is lower risk rather than less code. View is read-only by opt-out, so every path that can change the post has to remember to check for it. That has already surfaced one gap at a time (canvas, code editor, undo/redo, sidebar settings). It is also the only reason the stack touches block-editor read-only behavior (isPreviewMode checks in use-input.js and the insert cache in store/utils.js), which changes behavior for everyone.

Edit/Suggest still need the intent store, switcher, and code editor masking, so those stay. If View comes back later, deriving it from roles or a share link (the server deciding what a user can do) seems like a better fit than a self-selected toggle the client has to enforce.

If others agree this is a good idea, I'll pull View out of this PR and cascade the change through the stack.