Add bulk "Generate AI Summary" action to the posts list table

[prasadkarmalkar]

What?

Closes #614

Why?

AI summary generation is only available from within the block editor for a single post at a time. This PR adds a bulk workflow that lets users generate summaries for multiple posts in a single action directly from the list table.

How?

References from the existing Alt Text Generation bulk action pattern:

1. PHP (three new methods on Summarization experiment):

   • register_bulk_action() — appends "Generate AI Summary" to the bulk actions menu.
   • handle_bulk_action() — validates capabilities (edit_posts + per-post edit_post), then redirects back to edit.php with wpai_bulk_summary=1&wpai_post_ids=1,2,3 query args.
   • maybe_enqueue_bulk_assets() — detects the redirect on page reload, sanitizes post IDs, resolves the correct REST base from the current post type (so pages and custom post types work), and enqueues the bulk script with localized data (window.aiSummarizationBulkData).

2. JavaScript (src/experiments/summarization/bulk.ts, new file):

   • On DOMContentLoaded, reads window.aiSummarizationBulkData and processes posts sequentially.
   • Checks provider availability; shows an admin notice error if no AI connector is configured.
   • For each post: calls runAbility('ai/summarization', { context: postId }) (the ability fetches post content from the DB itself), fetches raw block content via the REST API, strips any pre-existing summary block, prepends the new one, and saves both content and meta.ai_generated_summary in a single apiFetch POST.
   • Displays a live-updating progress notice and a final success/failure summary.
   • Cleans up wpai_bulk_summary and wpai_post_ids from the URL via history.replaceState.

3. Webpack (webpack.config.js): Adds experiments/summarization-bulk entry pointing to bulk.ts.

Use of AI Tools

AI assistance: Yes
Tool(s): GitHub Copilot
Model(s): Claude Sonnet 4.6
Used for: Initial code skeleton. Final implementation reviewed and edited by me.

Testing Instructions

Prerequisites: An AI connector must be configured in Settings → Connectors.

1. Go to Posts → All Posts (or Pages → All Pages).
2. Select two or more posts using the checkboxes.
3. Open the Bulk Actions dropdown — confirm "Generate AI Summary" is listed.
4. Select "Generate AI Summary" and click Apply.
5. The page reloads; a progress notice appears: "Generating summaries: 0 / N…"
6. Wait for processing to complete — the notice updates to show success/failure counts.
7. Open one of the processed posts in the block editor and confirm:
   • An AI Summary block group is prepended to the content.
   • The post meta ai_generated_summary is added
8. Run the bulk action again on the same posts — confirm the old summary block is replaced, not duplicated.
9. Repeat on the Pages list table to confirm post-type handling works.
10. Negative test: Disable the summarization experiment in Settings → AI and confirm the bulk action is no longer listed.

Screenshots or screencast

Screen.Recording.2026-06-03.at.10.28.13.AM.mov

Changelog Entry

Added - Bulk "Generate AI Summary" action to the posts and pages list table, enabling AI summary generation for multiple posts at once without opening the block editor.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 96.77419% with 2 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 77.17%. Comparing base (8303620) to head (a698941).

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
...cludes/Experiments/Summarization/Summarization.php	98.18%	1 Missing ⚠️
includes/helpers.php	85.71%	1 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@              Coverage Diff              @@
##             develop     #650      +/-   ##
=============================================
+ Coverage      77.05%   77.17%   +0.11%     
- Complexity      2233     2252      +19     
=============================================
  Files            103      103              
  Lines           9216     9273      +57     
=============================================
+ Hits            7101     7156      +55     
- Misses          2115     2117       +2     

Flag	Coverage Δ
unit	77.17% <96.77%> (+0.11%)	⬆️

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Co-authored-by: prasadkarmalkar <prasadkarmalkar@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: dkotter <dkotter@git.wordpress.org>
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[dkotter]

Overall this looks good, left a few minor comments. In addition to those, we should look to get tests added here to cover these changes. Maybe some unit tests though likely won't provide much value but definitely want E2E tests to cover these changes

[prasadkarmalkar]

Hi @dkotter , I have updated the above requested changes and also added e2e and integration test cases (Took reference from other test cases). Let me know if this is fine or need any changes.

[dkotter]

Seems like this regex could likely break, if for instance the attribute order changes. This is another place that would be great to standardize this in useSummaryGeneration.ts so we parse this block out the same in all contexts (if possible). Right now we have code in that file that parses content into blocks and then loops through all blocks to look at the block name and attributes that we may be able to use here

[prasadkarmalkar]

Updated to use the flow as per useSummaryGeneration.ts and added the common function findSummaryBlock inside utils.ts

[prasadkarmalkar]

There is an issue with using parse existing content. Trying to find a solution as parse is giving an empty array .

[prasadkarmalkar]

Issue is fixed. as the parse()/createBlock() need block types registered first. Added a one-time registerCoreBlocks() call in bulk.ts

[dkotter]

Changes look good here but looks like the addition of the @wordpress/block-library is breaking most of our automated checks. Looks like it's pulling in a newer version of React maybe?

[prasadkarmalkar]

@dkotter , Fixed the issue it was due to different version of node while installing the dependency on my local.

[dkotter]

Tested and is working well.

I think the last thing here is we recently added minimum content length requirements for most of our features and that doesn't seem to apply here for bulk generation. I would suggest we implement that for bulk generation to match individual generation