- What does the statamic-addon/visual-editor package do?
- It is a Statamic addon that adds a visual, in-context editing experience, letting editors work with page content directly on the front end instead of switching to the control panel. It layers a click-to-edit overlay on top of Statamic's existing Live Preview rather than replacing it, and it explicitly avoids subclassing, wrapping, or re-registering Statamic fieldtypes and control panel Vue components. Templates opt in per element with a single tag, so the change surface in your theme is small.
- How do I install and enable statamic-addon/visual-editor?
- Install it with Composer and enable it for the fields or templates you want editable. For an evaluation, pin an exact version constraint such as "statamic-addon/visual-editor": "x.y.z" rather than a caret range, because there is no published compatibility matrix. Do not vendor:publish the dist folder; the control panel loads it through a symlink and Live Preview fetches the build from the addon's own route.
- Does the visual editor work with both Antlers and Blade templates?
- Yes. Antlers templates use the {{ visual_edit }} tag, while Blade uses Statamic::tag('visual_edit')->...->fetch(). The main Blade caveat is that the output must be unescaped with {!! !!}, which is a documented but routine footgun. The blueprint and context conventions differ slightly between the two engines, so document them per partial inside your team.
- Does the visual editor add markup or data to my production site?
- By design the tag emits data-sid and data-sve-* attributes only inside Live Preview and renders nothing outside it, so annotation is nominally zero-footprint in production. That claim still needs verifying on your own templates, since an escaping mistake in Blade or a locally rebuilt asset bundle could change the behaviour. A quick production-mode page source check is a sensible part of any pilot.
- Which Statamic, Laravel, and PHP versions does statamic-addon/visual-editor support?
- The material supplied with the package does not state a supported Statamic major or minor version, nor a Laravel and PHP matrix. Because the addon rides Statamic's Live Preview and control panel, breaking changes in a Statamic control panel release are a real compatibility risk. Ask the maintainer directly and pin an exact version until you have a confirmed upgrade path.
- How does the addon integrate with Statamic Live Preview and the control panel?
- It does not replace Live Preview; it decorates it with a click-to-edit overlay host, a preview bridge, and postMessage traffic inside the preview iframe. Clicking an annotated element takes the editor to the matching field in the control panel, with an optional set picker over the plus, field, blueprint, context, and outline-inside arguments. No application-level service wiring or schema work is implied beyond the template annotations.
- What is _visual_id and does the addon write data into my content?
- The repository includes a _visual_id migration, which the technical assessment flags as a locked surface. It is not documented in the supplied material whether that value is additive and derived or whether annotating content writes data that would be painful to unwind. Test on a cloned site and inspect stored content before committing, and get a written answer from the maintainer about how to remove it cleanly.
- Why is the visual editor overlay not appearing on my site?
- The runtime is a prebuilt JavaScript kernel in resources/dist/build, where addon.js imports the overlay-host file by its exact hashed filename. Rebuilding or republishing those assets can emit a new hash, invalidate the old file, and blank the entire control panel editor, and vendor:publish of that dist is explicitly forbidden. On the hosting side, a custom asset-publish step, CDN rewrite, or a Content Security Policy that blocks the preview iframe or postMessage traffic can cause a silent total failure with no PHP error, so check the browser console and network tab first.
- How should I test statamic-addon/visual-editor before using it in production?
- Run a staging pilot on a clone that mirrors your real theme, with an exact version constraint and no caret range. Enable one collection and three to five templates, annotate your set partials plus two or three fixed fields, then verify that the overlay appears, that clicking navigates to the right field, that the set picker opens over the plus, and that nothing renders in production mode. Also confirm your hosting, CDN, and CSP allow the addon's preview route, and look for a dist-integrity script you can run as an adoption gate.
- Is statamic-addon/visual-editor actively maintained and safe to depend on?
- External validation is very thin: one star, zero dependents, and no community issue history, with documentation that is largely internal governance material rather than user-facing install and upgrade guides. The release chain is reserved for a single individual, making it a bus-factor-one dependency, and no cadence or SLA is documented. Treat it as a conditional pilot candidate for a Statamic site already using Live Preview, not as a core dependency, and fall back to Statamic's built-in Live Preview if the maintenance risk is unacceptable.