A pending-plugin-count badge on the 🔌 button — reusing the dashboard cache instead of doubling state

A client asked: " After I run a cross-site update check, can each site show — right in the site list — how many plugin updates are still pending? " Visually the answer was obvious: a small red badge on the top-right of the 🔌 plugins button, like an unread-notification count. Easy to specify. The harder question was where the data comes from . We could have added a fresh API endpoint and a new cache to hold "pending count per site." But doing that would have doubled state management , and we already had a cache that knew this. We routed through the existing one. Here's the reasoning behind that decision. Reuse the dashboard cache as the data source The cross-site updates dashboard (the one we wrote about in killing the 24.5-second silence with a cache-first design ) already kept each site's pending plugins in a localStorage-backed state called _updatesDashState . Its shape: _updatesDashState = { sites : [ { site_id : " abc... " , plugins : [ {...}, {...}, {...} ] }, { site_id : " def... " , plugins : [ ... ] }, ], total_pending_count : 12 , loadedAt : 1748600000000 , } Look up by site_id , take plugins.length , and you have the badge's number. No new API, no new cache. The data that powers the cross-site dashboard is also the data that powers the site-list badge. The win of not adding state is quiet but real: When a maintenance run invalidates _updatesDashState , the badge disappears automatically (no sync code to write) The TTL (originally 7 days; later extended to 30 days with partial invalidation ) inherits from the existing design The badge and the underlying count can't drift — there's no second copy to fall out of step There's always a temptation to spin up a new endpoint for a new UI element. The rule we settled on: if the existing state answers it, don't add more. Attaching the badge — consolidate into helpers Both the list view and grid view need the same badge on the 🔌 button, so the logic lives in helpers. function _getPendingPluginCountForSite ( siteId )