search: don't assume a title column exists in searchable collections

[mvanhorn]

What does this PR do?

Search and suggestions hardcoded c.title in the generated SQL, so searching a collection whose schema has no title field failed with D1_ERROR: no such column: title and broke multi-collection search entirely.

The query now detects whether the collection actually defines a title field (via the fields registry, with identifier validation) and only selects it when present: NULL in the main search projection and COALESCE(slug, id) for suggestions, dropping the title IS NOT NULL filter when there is no title field.

Closes #1178

Type of change

• Bug fix
• Feature (requires maintainer-approved Discussion)
• Refactor (no behavior change)
• Translation
• Documentation
• Performance improvement
• Tests
• Chore (dependencies, CI, tooling)

Checklist

• I have read CONTRIBUTING.md
• pnpm typecheck passes
• pnpm lint passes (changed files)
• pnpm test passes (targeted tests for my change: search + mcp/search, 13 passing)
• pnpm format has been run
• I have added/updated tests for my changes
• User-visible strings: N/A (no admin UI strings)
• I have added a changeset (emdash: patch)
• New features link to an approved Discussion: N/A (bug fix)

AI-generated code disclosure

• This PR includes AI-generated code — model/tool: GPT-5.5 (Codex CLI)

Screenshots / test output

tests/integration/mcp/search.test.ts + tests/integration/search/suggest.test.ts
Test Files  2 passed (2)
     Tests  13 passed (13)

[changeset-bot]

🦋 Changeset detected

Latest commit: c04d512

The changes in this PR will be included in the next version bump.

This PR includes changesets to release 14 packages

Name	Type
emdash	Patch
@emdash-cms/cloudflare	Patch
@emdash-cms/sandbox-workerd	Patch
@emdash-cms/fixture-perf-site	Patch
@emdash-cms/perf-demo-site	Patch
@emdash-cms/cache-demo-site	Patch
@emdash-cms/admin	Patch
@emdash-cms/auth	Patch
@emdash-cms/blocks	Patch
@emdash-cms/gutenberg-to-portable-text	Patch
@emdash-cms/x402	Patch
create-emdash	Patch
@emdash-cms/auth-atproto	Patch
@emdash-cms/plugin-embeds	Patch

Not sure what this means? Click here to learn what changesets are.

Click here if you're a maintainer who wants to add another changeset to this PR

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commit: c04d512

[github-actions]

Query-count snapshot changes

4 routes changed, total Δ +4 queries.

SQLite

Route	Before	After	Δ
GET /search (cold)	6	7	+1
GET /search (warm)	6	7	+1

D1

Route	Before	After	Δ
GET /search (cold)	14	15	+1
GET /search (warm)	5	6	+1

_{Comparing snapshot files between base and head. Updated automatically on each push.}

[emdashbot]

Review: fix/1178-mcp-search-d1-column

Approach judgment: This is the right fix for the right problem. Search and suggestions assumed every collection had a title column, which broke multi-collection search when any searchable collection lacked one. Detecting the field via _emdash_fields and conditionally selecting c.title, NULL, or COALESCE(c.slug, c.id) is a sound, minimally invasive approach.

What I checked:

• Full diff of packages/core/src/search/query.ts and the two new integration tests.
• SQL safety: no raw interpolation of variables; identifiers are validated with validateIdentifier(). The new collectionHasField helper uses the Kysely query builder correctly.
• Content-table conventions: locale filters are preserved, deleted_at checks are preserved, no locale filtering issues.
• Cross-cutting concerns: verified there are no other hardcoded c.title references in search/MCP code.
• Edge cases: title may be null even when the field exists, so row.title ?? undefined remains correct. The COALESCE(c.slug, c.id) fallback in suggestions guarantees a non-null string since id is a required primary key.
• Tests: both the MCP search and suggestions integration tests cover titleless collections in multi-collection scenarios, which directly reproduces the reported bug.
• Changeset: present (emdash: patch).

Headline conclusion: The implementation is clean, safe, and well-tested. I found no logic bugs, regressions, security issues, or AGENTS.md convention violations.

One non-blocking observation: collectionHasField adds an extra query per collection in loops that already query _emdash_collections for search config. In the existing architecture this is acceptable, but future work could batch or cache field metadata if search latency becomes a concern.

[ascorbic]

You could avoid the extra query by updating getSearchableFields to get the info you need in the same query.

If you want to improve things further in a follow-up, you could put all of the metadata queries (getSearchConfig, getSearchableFields, ftsTableExists at least) into a new getCollectionFieldInfo function that's wrapped with requestCached("collectionFields:" + slug, ...) or something.

[ascorbic]

Avoid the extra hot-path query