Most design systems only document the happy path. Aura documents the quiet ones, because that is where software usually starts lying — fake shimmer over a silent night, spinners that perform effort, a $0 that reads as failure. Here, waiting states report. They never perform.
The empty state
Nothing-needs-you is the product’s best case. State it plainly, explain what remains on watch, and give the owner one useful next move. Empty states never need a mascot, a decorative illustration, or the word “empty” to feel intentional.
Nothing needs you.
The team is on shift — the next brief lands at 7:00.
Working, live
When the team is mid-task, the surface earns liveness with facts, not motion: the WorkingLine cycles the actual sources being read and counts what has actually been found. Both survive data-motion="reduced" untouched — a climbing number and a changing source name are information, not animation.
Skeletons
A skeleton is permitted exactly one claim: a fetch is in flight. The table below shows its busy state next to its true empty state — flip between them and notice the skeleton never appears when nothing is loading. A shimmer over a surface that isn’t fetching is a small lie, and small lies compound.
Never zero
The first minutes of ownership are the most fragile. Before a source is connected, a figure surface renders the sentence Setting up. — dimmed to --ink-secondary and set at 62% of the hero size, in the same sans as the figure it stands in for — rather than a $0 that reads as a failed business. The live specimen is on the morning brief, where the hero number carries all four honest states.