Articles now show a reading time estimate

Every article now displays an estimated reading time next to the title — based on the article's word count and recalculated on every save, so it's always accurate to the latest version of the piece.

Readers use this signal constantly to decide whether to commit to a long piece or skim. Three minutes? Read now. Twelve minutes? Save for later. Without that hint, both decisions default to "keep scrolling".

Articles with visible reading time tend to see better engagement on the long-form end, because readers who do commit are committing with their eyes open.

While we were in the query layer we also cleaned up the featured-categories query and added defensive empty-state handling across the blog renderer — small papercuts that the next release of features will benefit from.