React: Fix manifest stories empty when meta has no explicit title

[kasperpeulen]

Closes #

What I did

Fixed component manifest generating empty stories: [] when story files don't have an explicit title in their meta object (the common case — Storybook auto-generates titles from file paths).

The manifest generator re-parses story files with loadCsf() and needs a makeTitle callback to compute the title. Previously, the fallback was 'No title', causing the CSF parser to generate wrong story IDs (e.g. no-title--logged-in instead of header--logged-in). Since extractStories filters by matching against the index entry IDs, none matched — resulting in empty stories: [].

The fix: always use entry.title from the story index, which was already correctly computed by the StoryIndexGenerator (via userOrAutoTitleFromSpecifier). There's no need to inspect the user's title from the file since the index already has the canonical answer.

Checklist for Contributors

Testing

The changes in this PR are covered in the following automated tests:

• stories
• unit tests
• integration tests
• end-to-end tests

Manual testing

Caution

This section is mandatory for all contributions. If you believe no manual test is necessary, please state so explicitly. Thanks!

1. Create a React Vite project with stories that have no explicit title in their meta (the common/default case)
2. Enable features: { experimentalComponentsManifest: true } in .storybook/main.ts
3. Run storybook build or storybook dev
4. Check /manifests/components.json — stories should now be populated for all components, not just those with explicit titles

Documentation

• Add or update documentation reflecting your changes
• If you are deprecating/removing a feature, make sure to update
  MIGRATION.MD

Checklist for Maintainers

• When this PR is ready for testing, make sure to add ci:normal, ci:merged or ci:daily GH label to it to run a specific set of sandboxes. The particular set of sandboxes can be found in code/lib/cli-storybook/src/sandbox-templates.ts

• Make sure this PR contains one of the labels below:

  Available labels

  • bug: Internal changes that fixes incorrect behavior.
  • maintenance: User-facing maintenance tasks.
  • dependencies: Upgrading (sometimes downgrading) dependencies.
  • build: Internal-facing build tooling & test updates. Will not show up in release changelog.
  • cleanup: Minor cleanup style change. Will not show up in release changelog.
  • documentation: Documentation only changes. Will not show up in release changelog.
  • feature request: Introducing a new feature.
  • BREAKING CHANGE: Changes that break compatibility in some way with current major version.
  • other: Changes that don't fit in the above categories.

🦋 Canary release

This PR does not have a canary release associated. You can request a canary release of this pull request by mentioning the @storybookjs/core team here.

core team members can create a canary release here or locally with gh workflow run --repo storybookjs/storybook publish.yml --field pr=<PR_NUMBER>

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes

  • Component manifest generation now reliably falls back to the entry title when story/metadata lacks an explicit title, ensuring stable, predictable story names.

• Tests

  • Added tests confirming stories are populated using the entry title as a fallback when metadata has no explicit title.

[nx-cloud]

View your CI Pipeline Execution ↗ for commit 5833e6b

Command	Status	Duration	Result
nx run-many -t compile,check,knip,test,pretty-d...	❌ Failed	5m 23s	View ↗

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☁️ Nx Cloud last updated this comment at 2026-02-20 10:11:43 UTC

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Changed the component manifest generator's CSF-title fallback to use the manifest entry's title when meta.title is absent. Added tests asserting stories are populated using the index entry title; tests duplicate the same assertion twice.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
Title fallback & tests code/renderers/react/src/componentManifest/generator.ts, code/renderers/react/src/componentManifest/generator.test.ts	Updated loadCsf's makeTitle callback to return entry.title instead of a hardcoded 'No title'. Added tests that assert stories are populated with the index entry title when CSF meta lacks an explicit title (two identical test blocks were added).

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~12 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• React: Improve error handling of component manifest generation #32855 — modifies component manifest generation and title resolution logic; overlaps same file and fallback behavior.
• Core: 10.1 features WIP #32810 — alters React component manifest generator affecting CSF title derivation.
• React: Add manifests/components.html page #32905 — updates the componentManifest generator and its tests; closely related to test and generator changes.

✨ Finishing Touches

• 📝 Generate docstrings (stacked PR)
• 📝 Generate docstrings (commit on current branch)

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[storybook-app-bot]

Package Benchmarks

^{Commit: 5833e6b, ran on 20 February 2026 at 10:15:14 UTC}

The following packages have significant changes to their size or dependencies:

@storybook/addon-vitest

	Before	After	Difference
Dependency count	2	2	0
Self size	402 KB	391 KB	🎉 -11 KB 🎉
Dependency size	338 KB	338 KB	0 B
Bundle Size Analyzer	Link	Link