Docs demos must clone reusable values per editor

Problem

The docs app was mounting multiple editors from the same reusable Slate value object. On /docs/table, the generic table-demo and the disable-merge table demo both started from the same tableValue tree, so Slate's DOM-to-node bookkeeping could end up pointing at the wrong mounted editor.

Symptoms

• Dragging across multiple cells in the first table demo raised Unable to find the path for Slate node: {"text":"Heading","bold":true}.
• The crash came from Slate React's DOM selection sync path, not from a table transform:
  • findPath
  • toSlatePoint
  • toSlateRange
  • Editable.useMemo[onDOMSelectionChange]
• Fresh verification was confusing because a corrupted local node_modules/.bun mirror could also break docs compilation with the unrelated is-hotkey parse error.

What Didn't Work

• Treating this as a table-plugin bug first was a red herring. The failure surfaced during table selection, but the actual problem was editor ownership of the underlying value graph.
• Verifying against an already-running local docs server was also misleading. A stale process on 3002 kept serving old code, so the first browser retest did not prove anything.

Solution

Clone reusable demo values before passing them into usePlateEditor, so every mounted docs editor owns its own Slate tree.

import cloneDeep from 'lodash/cloneDeep.js';

export const createDemoValueSnapshot = <T,>(value: T): T => cloneDeep(value);

Use that helper for the generic demo renderer and the custom table no-merge demo:

const editor = usePlateEditor({
  plugins: EditorKit,
  value: createDemoValueSnapshot(DEMO_VALUES[id]),
});

const editor = usePlateEditor({
  plugins: [
    ...EditorKit,
    TablePlugin.configure({
      options: {
        disableMerge: true,
      },
    }),
  ],
  value: createDemoValueSnapshot(tableValue),
});

Add a regression test that proves the same reusable demo value produces isolated snapshots:

const snapshotA = createDemoValueSnapshot(DEMO_VALUES.table);
const snapshotB = createDemoValueSnapshot(DEMO_VALUES.table);

expect(snapshotA[2]).not.toBe(DEMO_VALUES.table[2]);
expect(snapshotA[2]).not.toBe(snapshotB[2]);

Why This Works

Slate expects each mounted editor to own its own node graph. Reusing one static value object across multiple editors breaks that assumption, so DOM selection can resolve a node from one mounted editor against another editor's tree and fail path lookup. Deep-cloning the initial value restores one-editor-one-tree ownership and keeps Slate's internal DOM mappings stable.

Prevention

• Never pass a shared exported Slate value directly into more than one mounted editor.
• If a docs example uses reusable constants like DEMO_VALUES[id], snapshot the value at the editor boundary.
• When a docs page mounts a generic demo and a custom demo from the same source value, treat that as a multi-editor case even if both examples look read-only at first glance.
• If local verification suddenly shows unrelated .bun parse failures while CI is green, clean non-versioned local env first:
  • remove node_modules
  • remove app caches like apps/www/.next and apps/www/.contentlayer
  • remove .turbo
  • rerun pnpm install

Related Issues

• Related learning: .claude/docs/solutions/ui-bugs/2026-03-27-version-history-demo-must-clone-snapshots-per-editor.md