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AI Search: Prevent DOM errors when asking AI Chat questions #46476

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AI Search: Prevent DOM errors when asking AI Chat questions #46476

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@anaemnesis anaemnesis commented Jan 7, 2026 •
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Fixes SEARCH-113

Proposed changes:

This PR wraps AI's loading message in a <span> tag for more reliable DOM management.

Other information:

  • Have you written new tests for your changes, if applicable?
  • Have you checked the E2E test CI results, and verified that your changes do not break them?
  • Have you tested your changes on WordPress.com, if applicable (if so, you'll see a generated comment below with a script to run)?

Jetpack product discussion

No

Does this pull request change what data or activity we track or use?

No

Testing instructions:

  • Add the Jetpack AI Search widget somewhere to your site
  • Ask it a bunch of questions
  • You should expect to always receive an answer, answers should be rendered with the word-by-word animation
  • There should be no removeChild, <Text>, or related console errors.

@anaemnesis
Fix AI Chat disappearing
e769a6c 
The AI Chat component would crash with a React DOM reconciliation error
("removeChild") after submitting multiple questions. The root cause was
a raw text node (the loading message) that React couldn't reliably manage
when external scripts might modify the DOM.

Fixed by:
- Wrapping the loading message in <span> tags for stable DOM management
- Stripping HTML during word-by-word animation to avoid invalid fragments
@anaemnesis
changelog
e796782
@anaemnesis anaemnesis self-assigned this Jan 7, 2026
@anaemnesis anaemnesis added the Coverage tests to be added later Use to ignore the Code coverage requirement check when tests will be added in a follow-up PR label Jan 7, 2026
Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings January 7, 2026 14:42
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github-actions bot commented Jan 7, 2026 •
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Are you an Automattician? Please test your changes on all WordPress.com environments to help mitigate accidental explosions.

  • To test on WoA, go to the Plugins menu on a WoA dev site. Click on the "Upload" button and follow the upgrade flow to be able to upload, install, and activate the Jetpack Beta plugin. Once the plugin is active, go to Jetpack > Jetpack Beta, select your plugin (Jetpack), and enable the fix/ai-search-disappearing branch.
  • To test on Simple, run the following command on your sandbox:
bin/jetpack-downloader test jetpack fix/ai-search-disappearing

Interested in more tips and information?

  • In your local development environment, use the jetpack rsync command to sync your changes to a WoA dev blog.
  • Read more about our development workflow here: PCYsg-eg0-p2
  • Figure out when your changes will be shipped to customers here: PCYsg-eg5-p2

@github-actions github-actions bot added [Block] AI Chat [Plugin] Jetpack Issues about the Jetpack plugin. https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/ labels Jan 7, 2026
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github-actions bot commented Jan 7, 2026 •
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Thank you for your PR!

When contributing to Jetpack, we have a few suggestions that can help us test and review your patch:

  • ✅ Include a description of your PR changes.
  • 🔴 Add a "[Status]" label (In Progress, Needs Review, ...).
  • 🔴 Add a "[Type]" label (Bug, Enhancement, Janitorial, Task).
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This comment will be updated as you work on your PR and make changes. If you think that some of those checks are not needed for your PR, please explain why you think so. Thanks for cooperation 🤖

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If you have questions about anything, reach out in #jetpack-developers for guidance!

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@github-actions github-actions bot added the [Status] Needs Author Reply We need more details from you. This label will be auto-added until the PR meets all requirements. label Jan 7, 2026
Copilot AI reviewed Jan 7, 2026
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Pull request overview

This PR fixes DOM reconciliation errors in the AI Chat feature by preventing invalid HTML fragments during word-by-word animation. The fix strips HTML tags to plain text during animation, then displays the full HTML after animation completes, and wraps the loading message in a <span> element for proper DOM management.

Key Changes:

  • Modified the ShowLittleByLittle component to strip HTML tags during animation and display plain text word-by-word
  • Wrapped the loading message in a <span> tag to prevent DOM errors
  • Improved code comments to clarify the new animation approach

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

File Description
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/ai-chat/question-answer.js Refactored animation logic to strip HTML during word-by-word display, wrapped loading message in span, and updated comments
projects/plugins/jetpack/changelog/fix-ai-search-disappearing Added changelog entry documenting the bugfix

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jp-launch-control bot commented Jan 7, 2026 •
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Code Coverage Summary

This PR did not change code coverage!

That could be good or bad, depending on the situation. Everything covered before, and still is? Great! Nothing was covered before? Not so great. 🤷

Full summary · PHP report · JS report

Coverage check overridden by Coverage tests to be added later Use to ignore the Code coverage requirement check when tests will be added in a follow-up PR .

@anaemnesis
We just needed the span tag
0b50d96 
We just needed the span tag
kangzj
kangzj approved these changes Jan 8, 2026
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This looks good to me! Thanks for the fix 👍

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@kangzj kangzj kangzj approved these changes

@gibrown gibrown Awaiting requested review from gibrown

@sotirispl sotirispl Awaiting requested review from sotirispl

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[Block] AI Chat Coverage tests to be added later Use to ignore the Code coverage requirement check when tests will be added in a follow-up PR [Plugin] Jetpack Issues about the Jetpack plugin. https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/ [Status] Needs Author Reply We need more details from you. This label will be auto-added until the PR meets all requirements.

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