thinking-orbs

Dotted thought-orb loading indicators for AI & agent UIs. Six hand-tuned animated states, each shipped at two purpose-tuned sizes, rendered on a plain 2D canvas — no WebGL, no filters, works identically in Chrome, Safari and Firefox.

Live demo · Repository · Report an issue

Install

npm install thinking-orbs

Quick start

import { ThinkingOrb } from 'thinking-orbs';

function Status() {
  return <ThinkingOrb state="searching" size={64} />;
}

States

Six verbs an agent can be doing, each a distinct animation:

<ThinkingOrb state="working" />    {/* particles on tilted orbits */}
<ThinkingOrb state="searching" />  {/* a scan meridian sweeps a dotted globe */}
<ThinkingOrb state="solving" />    {/* bands scramble, then click back solved */}
<ThinkingOrb state="listening" />  {/* a waveform rolls through the rings */}
<ThinkingOrb state="composing" />  {/* an undulating multi-band sash */}
<ThinkingOrb state="shaping" />    {/* dotted outline: circle → triangle → square */}

Sizes

Two tuned presets — separate designs, not a scale factor. 64 for chat-avatar scale, 20 for inline-text scale. Each carries its own dot count, dot size and speed tuning:

<ThinkingOrb state="working" size={64} />
<ThinkingOrb state="working" size={20} />

Theme

Strictly monochrome — light ink for dark backgrounds, dark ink for light backgrounds — with the mode picked automatically from the host project:

<ThinkingOrb theme="auto" />   {/* default — detects from the project */}
<ThinkingOrb theme="dark" />   {/* pin: light dots for dark backgrounds */}
<ThinkingOrb theme="light" />  {/* pin: dark dots for light backgrounds */}

auto resolves in three layers and updates live when any of them change:

1. an ancestor data-theme="dark|light" attribute or dark/light class (the Tailwind / shadcn convention), watched via MutationObserver;
2. otherwise prefers-color-scheme, subscribed for live OS theme switches;
3. SSR-safe — the canvas paints only on the client, after the theme has resolved.

Other props

<ThinkingOrb
  state="solving"
  size={20}
  speed={1.5}          // multiplier on the preset's baked speed
  paused={false}       // freeze on the current frame
  aria-label="Analysing repository…"  // overrides the per-state default
/>

All other <canvas> props (className, style, data-*, …) pass through.

Accessibility & performance

• role="img" with a sensible per-state aria-label out of the box.
• prefers-reduced-motion: reduce renders a static representative frame — no animation — and still follows the live theme.
• Every instance pauses automatically when scrolled offscreen (IntersectionObserver) or when the tab is hidden, and resumes in phase — all instances share one clock.
• Plain 2D canvas arcs only: no ctx.filter, no SVG filters, no WebGL — the same pixels everywhere, cheap on low-end devices. Device-pixel-ratio capped at 2.

License

MIT © Jakub Antalik