Per-collection admin list columns (admin.listColumns) — show custom fields in the content list

[edrpls]

Problem

The admin content list hardcodes its columns: Title / Status / (Locale when i18n is on) / Date (packages/admin/src/components/ContentList.tsx). For collections whose identity lives in a custom field, the list is a wall of near-identical rows and editors open every entry to see the one field they're scanning for.

Three concrete cases from a production migration (a film-festival site moving off WordPress):

• Sponsors — editors retag tier (select), festival_track (select) and sort_order (integer) across ~80 partners. The list shows none of them.
• Contact inbox — a contact_submissions collection where triage lives in a submission_status select. We currently prefix the status into the title via a beforeSave hook ("[NUEVO] name · consulta") purely so it's visible in the list — a workaround that burns the title field for what should be a column.
• Screenings — start_datetime + a venue reference are the two things an editor scans for; neither is visible.

We've built an interim read-only plugin admin page that re-lists one collection with its fields as columns, but that's a parallel surface that duplicates the stock list and has to be retired later. The gap is general and feels like it belongs in core.

Proposal

Let a collection declare extra list columns from custom fields.

Option A — collection-level config (my preference):

// seed schema / SchemaRegistry collection config
{
  "slug": "partners",
  "admin": { "listColumns": ["tier", "festival_track", "sort_order"] },
  "fields": [ ... ]
}

• Storage: a nullable JSON column on _emdash_collections (migration + SchemaRegistry + seed apply), or a scalar column if you'd rather avoid JSON there.
• Manifest: _buildManifest already emits per-field kind / label / select options; the collection entry gains listColumns: string[]. Unknown/removed field slugs are dropped at manifest build (renames can't strand the admin).
• Admin: ContentList inserts one <td> per declared column between Title and Status. Rows already carry full data (getItemTitle reads item.data.title), so no API/server change is needed for rendering.

Option B — field-level flag ("showInList": true on the field def): less plumbing conceptually, but column order becomes implicit (field order) and the collection-level intent ("this list shows these three things") gets scattered across field defs. Mentioning it in case you prefer the schema to stay field-centric.

Rendering rules (v1)

• select / multiSelect: resolve value → option label from the manifest options; unknown values render raw (visible, not blank).
• string / number / integer: as-is; boolean: ✓ / —; datetime: the same relative/short format the Date column uses.
• reference / repeater / portableText / image / file: excluded in v1 (references need a join or N+1 hydration — out of scope until there's a story for it; happy to note it as follow-up).
• Empty/missing values render an em dash.
• Cap the declared columns (e.g. 4) so the table stays usable; overflow is ignored with a console warning at manifest build.

Deliberate non-goals (v1)

• No sorting on custom columns. The server's orderBy whitelist stays title|status|locale|updatedAt. Custom-field sort without indexes full-scans (exactly the issue Collection tables index only system columns — custom editorial fields used in where/orderBy get no index, so live list queries full-scan on D1 #1533 raises for D1); if/when indexed fields land (discussion Add `indexed` option for custom field B-tree indexes #1649), the whitelist could grow per-column as a follow-up.
• No filtering, no per-user column preferences — this is a schema-declared, collection-wide setting.

What I'd ship in the PR

• Migration + SchemaRegistry read/write + seed-schema support (+ emdash types passthrough if applicable)
• Manifest emission with unknown-slug pruning
• ContentList rendering (Lingui-wrapped headers from field labels), matching the existing table/i18n patterns
• Tests: core (registry round-trip, manifest pruning, seed apply) and admin (column rendering incl. select-label resolution, cap, empty-state) on real in-memory SQLite per the house rules; changeset (emdash minor + @emdash-cms/admin minor)

Happy to adjust the shape (A vs B, naming, cap, which kinds render in v1) to whatever fits the project's direction — nothing here is precious. If approved I'll open the PR with the AI-disclosure box checked (built with Claude Code; reviewed and owned by me).

Prior related threads I checked: #1533 (custom-field index full-scans), #1649 (indexed fields), #1523 (bulk actions in the content list — adjacent but orthogonal). I didn't find an existing proposal for list columns.

[ascorbic]

Looks good. Approved