The canonical Craft.js state from real saves shows that layout shells
(Section, BackgroundSection, HeroSimple, FeaturesGrid, ColumnLayout,
CTASection, FormContainer, Navbar, Footer) all serialize with
isCanvas:false. Only Container instances are canvases. The shells use
internal <Element canvas id="..."> linkedNodes for their drop targets.
Our previous CANVAS_TYPES set claimed all those shells were canvases,
which made Craft.js's toNodeTree walker hit an uncaught Invariant —
the shell asserted "I'm a canvas" but its render ignores data.nodes,
so the walker would chase phantom children.
ColumnLayout's render uses <Element id="col-0" is={Container} canvas>
which expects the columns to live in linkedNodes, not data.nodes. The
AI nests its column containers as direct children, so they'd land in
data.nodes — Craft.js's render ignores them (the layout draws fresh
empty Elements), but the orphaned children remain in state with
parent: <columnlayout-id>. Any subsequent toNodeTree walk then trips
on this inconsistency and the uncaught Invariant kills the editor.
Normalizer added in two places — treeToState (for scope=site/page
replaces) and buildNodeTree (for scope=section inserts and patch ops):
when we see a ColumnLayout with direct children, move them into
linkedNodes keyed col-0/col-1/col-2..., clear data.nodes, set the
column nodes' isCanvas to true (they hold content), and sync the
"columns" prop to the actual count.
treeToState() was setting isCanvas:true on every node, including leaf
components (Heading, TextBlock, ButtonLink, Spacer, ImageBlock). Craft.js
then renders those as empty drop-canvas wrappers instead of their actual
content, so the canvas appears blank after applying an AI-generated
'replace' response.
Now uses a CANVAS_TYPES set matching the apply-ai-response utility:
only the layout wrappers (Container, Section, ColumnLayout, Hero/Features/
CTA sections, FormContainer, Navbar, Footer, etc.) are canvases. ROOT is
forced to be a canvas regardless of source type so children render.
Also defensively normalizes props.style: AI sometimes emits an empty
array instead of an object, which can confuse downstream consumers.
Rebuilt the visual site builder from scratch using Craft.js, React 18,
and TypeScript. The new editor renders directly in the DOM (no iframe),
supports 40+ components, multi-page with shared header/footer, 16
templates, full-spectrum color/gradient controls, custom head code
injection, save/publish workflow, and auto-save.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
