title: Compose country-specific summaries from existing country data contracts
date: 2026-07-14T00:00:00.000Z
category: design-patterns
module: Country Intel
problem_type: design_pattern
component: frontend_stimulus
severity: medium
applies_when:
- A country needs a bespoke overview without changing generic country pages
- Existing domain clients already expose the needed data and attribution
tags:
- country-intel
- china
- source-attribution
- progressive-loading
Compose country-specific summaries from existing country data contracts
Context
A country deep dive can need a domain-specific overview that does not fit the generic economic rows. The durable pattern is to compose that overview from the country page's existing data contracts, rather than creating a parallel aggregate endpoint or silently re-fetching the same sources.
This was applied to the China overview opened in Issue #5277 and is pending in PR #5297 at documentation time.
Guidance
Create a small, UI-owned view model with one group per required domain. ChinaCountrySummaryGroup gives every group an explicit state (loading, available, partial, stale, or unavailable) and holds its source-attributed signals in src/components/CountryBriefPanel.ts. Keep the state calculation with the orchestration code so the panel only renders the model it receives.
function chinaSummaryState(signals, expectedSignals) {
if (signals.length === 0) return 'unavailable';
if (signals.every((signal) => signal.stale)) return 'stale';
return signals.length < expectedSignals || signals.some((signal) => signal.stale)
? 'partial'
: 'available';
}
In src/app/country-intel.ts, reuse the existing IMF and stock promises, then compose the dedicated groups from the already established China macro, BIS credit, shipping, sector-exposure, energy, aviation, and hazard paths. Every displayed signal keeps its source and preserves an observation or retrieval time only when its contract supplies one; the card must not fabricate one from the brief-open time or turn a freshness timestamp into a health claim.
Guard asynchronous updates with both the request token and the current country code before rendering. CountryIntelManager only publishes China groups while the same request is current and the active panel still represents CN; CountryDeepDivePanel.updateChinaCountrySummary applies the same code check. This prevents a late China request from populating a country selected afterward.
Do not bypass existing access boundaries for a richer country card. fetchMultiSectorExposure relies on fetchCountryChokepointIndex, which returns an empty result without premium access. Treat the absent optional signal as partial or unavailable, while retaining public data such as shipping rates where it is already public.
Render source text with DOM text nodes, per-group polite status regions, and a responsive single-column layout. The regression test in tests/china-country-summary.test.mts exercises all five groups, stale and partial states, a country change, lower-case country codes, and an attribution string that resembles markup.
Why This Matters
Reusing established contracts keeps source-specific normalization, entitlement rules, cached hydration, and failure handling in one place. The explicit view model also makes degraded states visible instead of presenting a mix of late, stale, and unavailable values as a complete summary.
When to Apply
- A single country needs a clear, domain-oriented overview alongside the unchanged generic page.
- The required facts already have maintained clients, hydration, or RPC contracts.
- The source set can be incomplete, stale, gated, or arrive after a user changes country.
Examples
For China, the card contains five independently rendered groups: macro and policy, market and credit, trade and supply chain, energy, and availability. A group may render a partial result when one of its underlying public sources is absent, while a premium-gated trade detail remains absent for anonymous users. The generic page receives no China-specific card for another country.