emdash-simple-history

Simple History is a focused activity feed for EmDash CMS. It records content create, update, and delete events, then surfaces them in an admin history page and a dashboard widget so operators can quickly answer: what changed, and roughly when?

It is intentionally narrower than a compliance-grade audit product.

Features

• Records content lifecycle events with timestamps, action, collection, and resource identity
• Recent Activity dashboard widget for a quick operational pulse
• Dedicated /history admin page with:
  • collection filtering
  • action filtering
  • rolling windows and custom date ranges
  • pagination
  • empty states
  • retention summary
• Retention controls and tracked-collection controls stored in plugin KV
• Standard-format plugin architecture for trusted or sandboxed EmDash installs
• Private-only admin data routes backed by plugin storage

Installation

pnpm add emdash-simple-history

Register it in your EmDash config:

import { defineConfig } from "astro/config";
import { emdash } from "emdash/astro";
import { simpleHistoryPlugin } from "emdash-simple-history";

export default defineConfig({
	integrations: [
		emdash({
			plugins: [simpleHistoryPlugin()],
			// or sandboxed: [simpleHistoryPlugin()]
		}),
	],
});

What it captures

Each entry contains:

• timestamp
• action (create, update, delete)
• collection
• resourceId
• resourceType
• optional metadata (title, slug, status) when available

Admin UX

Dashboard widget

The widget highlights recent activity and short rolling-window counts.

History page

The plugin registers a /history admin page that combines:

• summary stats
• top active collections
• filter controls
• paginated activity table
• settings for retention, tracked collections, widget visibility, and page size

Settings

Simple History currently stores settings in the history page itself instead of a separate generated settings screen.

Available settings:

• retentionDays — 0 means keep entries forever
• trackedCollections — comma-separated collection slugs; empty means capture all collections
• showWidget — enables or disables the dashboard widget's content
• maxPageSize — hard cap for route and page pagination

Private plugin routes

All routes are private and mounted under /_emdash/api/plugins/simple-history/.

history/list

POST /_emdash/api/plugins/simple-history/history/list

Request body:

{
	"filters": {
		"collection": "posts",
		"action": "update",
		"window": "7d"
	},
	"limit": 25,
	"cursor": "optional-cursor"
}

Response data includes paginated items, nextCursor, hasMore, the normalized filters, and retention metadata.

history/summary

POST /_emdash/api/plugins/simple-history/history/summary

Returns retained totals, rolling-window counts, known collections, and widget state.

EmDash wraps successful plugin route responses in the normal { data: ... } envelope.

Marketplace / bundling

This package is structured for EmDash's plugin bundling flow:

pnpm build
emdash plugin bundle
emdash plugin publish --tarball dist/simple-history-0.1.1.tar.gz

Development

pnpm install
pnpm typecheck
pnpm test
pnpm build

Limitations

• This is activity history, not a forensic audit trail
• Actor attribution is intentionally omitted in v1
• Only content create/update/delete events are included in v1
• Tracked collection changes affect future captures only; they do not backfill historical data
• Standard plugins cannot dynamically unregister dashboard widgets at runtime, so a disabled widget renders a disabled state instead of disappearing entirely
• Current standard Block Kit tables do not provide a direct per-row deep-link affordance here, so the plugin surfaces collection and resource identity for fast lookup via the admin command palette/search

License

MIT