Nowadays it seems like every software application is adding an AI chat feature. Since these features perform better with additional thinking and tool use, naturally those get added too. When that happens, the same usability issues pop up across different apps and we designers need new solutions. Chat is a pretty simple and widely understood interface pattern... so what's the problem? Well when it's just two people talking in a messaging app, things are easy. But when an AI model is on the other side of the conversation and it's full of reasoning traces and tool calls (aka it's agentic ), chat isn't so simple anymore. Instead of "you ask something and the AI model responds", the patterns looks more like: You ask something The model responds with it's thinking It calls a tool and shows you the outcome It tells you what it thinks about the outcome It calls another tool ...…