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Course · Shipping AI interfaces

The AI interface checklist

Fifteen essays, one checklist. Before an AI surface ships, walk these ten questions — each one names a part of the interface this course built, and each one is checkable in five minutes.

Intermediate1 min read (computed · recorded 4)updated 2026-09-14aichecklistreviewcourse

by Motif Editors

revised 2026-09-14First publication in the bank-4 AI-interface curriculum.

Part 15 of 15 in Shipping AI interfacesComparing models without benchmarks

Key takeaways
  • Ten questions, five minutes: states, streams, sources, actions, honesty, budget, exits, labels, promises, and the reduced-motion pass.
  • Every question is checkable in the running interface — none of them need a backend.
  • The checklist is the course in one screen: each item names the essay that built it.

Ten questions before you ship

One: does every state — thinking, streaming, finished — have a labelled visual that ends? Two: does the stream read at any pause point, and does reduced motion collapse it to a fade? Three: do citations expand to sources that open? Four: do the actions announce what they actually did? Five: is the honesty line present, concrete and dismissible? Six: does the token budget name its parts and its thresholds? Seven: does every wait have an exit? Eight: are demo figures labelled as demo figures? Nine: does every promise — retry, feedback, local-first — match its wiring? Ten: does the reduced-motion pass show the same content without the motion?

The checklist is the course

Each question names an essay in this series and a component in the catalog: the states from the thinking essay, the stream from the streaming essay, the budget from the tokens essay. Walk the ten questions against a running surface and the interface either passes or names its next fix — which is the whole method of this site applied to AI chrome.

Words this guide uses that the glossary defines: Reduced motion

Practise the lesson

Theory sticks when you ship it. These original Motif assets put this guide's lesson to work — open one and copy it into your own page.

The component this essay works with — mounted, not pictured
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