When a system takes time to think, the interface has to say so — honestly. A named step ladder beats a spinner, because it tells someone which stage is running and what is still to come. That is the same craft as a considered page-enter animation, pointed at a harder problem.

I prototype interaction before it is built — whole flows, or single components like a generation card moving through idle, working, done and error. Prototypes make intended behaviour arguable while it is still cheap to change, and give engineers something exact to build against.

In production this is Framer Motion and GSAP, always with a reduced-motion path, so the interface stays readable for people who have asked for less movement.