Agentic UX
After the agent acts

Return Moment (Smart Briefing)

When the user returns, a short briefing shows what happened, what needs review, and what failed.

When to use

Agents may keep working while users are away; coming back should be easy.

Example scenario: Slack-style recap: 3 channels, 2 decisions needed, 1 failed deployment retry.

Anatomy

UI pieces that make this pattern recognizable.

  • While-you-were-away summary card
  • Approvals queue and failures up top
  • Deep links to threads, runs, or checkpoints

Guidance

Do

  • Prioritize actionable items over narrative
  • Let users dismiss or snooze briefings

Avoid

  • Do not deliver a wall-of-text recap with no actions

Limitations

When this pattern adds friction or fails to help.

  • Briefings that recap everything recreate notification overload
  • Stale summaries after the user already acted in another client
  • Missing deep links force users to hunt for context

Build notes

Implementation hints for engineers shipping the pattern.

  • Generate briefing from event stream since last active session
  • Support digest email/push with same structure

Examples

Annotated screenshots from production products, with designer critique.

Production screenshots for this pattern are not in the gallery yet. Use the Guide to audit your product, or check the Crosswalk for related catalogues.