Mockup · sidebar status line · iteration 3 · proposal for the owner to judge

One line, several jobs: when it holds, when it rolls

The sidebar row has one subtitle line. This page specifies a line that can roll between several things that are true at once, and lets you watch eight real situations play out. Nothing here is wired to the app.

Plain panel = the drawn sidebar row, what would shipHatched panel = commentary, never shipsScenario catalogue ↓Free-play bench ↓

Commentary · the rules

The idea in two tiers

Every state that can appear on the line is flagged holds or rolls. If anything that holds is true, it owns the line, exactly as today. If nothing holds, the line rolls between the states that roll.

Owner's rules (30 Oct 2026): the roll, 5 s dwell, pause on hover, shimmer kept, no count; errors displace everything; warnings and info may roll with progress; each state says whether it may be rolled away.
My recommendation is unchanged: the fixed order is the cheaper thing to ship and the overlap that prompted this is about 30 s. This page is the roll specified your way, so you can approve or reject it on what it does.
What changes from today: a persistent warning no longer hides progress for hours, since both are visible within one dwell. What does not change: errors, gesture acknowledgements and the run ladder.

The rules, and when each is triggered

#	Rule	Triggered when	See card
R1	Holders first. If any active state is flagged holds, the highest-ranked holder owns the line, fixed. Nothing rolls, and the rest wait in the tooltip. A holder beats a roller even where today's order ranks the roller higher (an acknowledgement must be seen).	An error-kind state, a gesture acknowledgement (adding, exporting), a run in flight, a copy with its cancel ring, a queued, stopped or partial run.	3, 4, 5
R2	Rollers roll. With no holder present and two or three rolls states, the line rolls between them in rank order.	Screens with Signals; a warning or info beside progress; the cloud batch beside either.	1, 2
R3	Cap of three. More than three rollers: the top-ranked one holds and the rest are in the tooltip. Rolling resumes when the count falls to three. (At 5 s, three lines is already a 15 s cycle.)	A fourth long state appears.	6
R4	Entry and exit. When a state starts, the line moves at once to the top-ranked state, one roll. When the state on screen ends, the line moves once to a survivor. When a state that is not on screen ends, nothing moves. A change of text inside a state (3 of 40 to 4 of 40) never rolls.	Any state starting or ending.	1, 7
R5	Dwell and pause. 5 s per line, a 0.32 s roll. Hovering the row pauses the roll; after about a second the tooltip lists every state running, in full, in rank order. Moving away starts a full dwell.	Always while rolling.	all
R6	2 s floor. A state that starts stays visible for at least 2 s, even if it ends sooner (the floor the gesture acknowledgements already have).	A short job: Signals on a small study.	4, 7
R7	Glyph, door and ring travel with their line. A warning or info glyph is part of its line and rolls with it. The ring belongs to the run, which holds, so a rolling row never has one. The glyph still opens its popover; hover pauses, so the click lands. Keyboard and VoiceOver reach it through the row's actions, not the moving line.	A warning or info state is on screen.	2
R8	Reduce Motion. No roll and no shimmer: the top-ranked state holds and changes by cut. The tooltip and lens rows carry the rest. (Apple's guidance would allow a dissolve; owner call.)	The system setting is on.	8
R9	Quiet. No count and no "finished" message: the lens row changing state is the confirmation. The row's accessibility value lists every state once and never changes on a roll. VoiceOver speaks a state when it starts, never on a roll or a finish.	Always.	1, bench log

Which states hold and which roll

State (shipped wording)	Kind	Policy	Why
Folder can't be found · Run failed · Can't be reached · Report out of date · a study that couldn't start	error	holds	G1: the project is unusable or the report is wrong. Displaces everything.
Analysing · N of M · ~1 min left · Stopping… · Queued · Stopped · Transcribed	activity / info	holds	G3: the verb-led run ladder owns the ring and the shimmer; Stopped, Queued and Transcribed are the researcher's own act or queue. Owner call for the last three.
Adding N interviews… · Exporting… · Copying · N% · Cancelling…	acknowledgement	holds	G2: a gesture answer that lives under one cycle, or carries a cancel ring.
Screens · N of M	activity	rolls	Long-lived, not started by a gesture, cannot be stopped.
Picking up Signals…	activity	rolls	Same. Shimmers once settled.
3 of 4 (cloud batch)	activity	rolls	Long-lived, no per-row control. Owner call.
Partial completion · Report couldn't be shown · N missing	warning	rolls	Your rule: visible within one dwell, glyph and door travel. Owner call for the report crash, which has the only door to its stack.
+N unanalysed	info	rolls	Quiet news; never holds over progress.

When someone adds a new state, ask in this order. G1: does it make the project unusable or the report wrong? Holds. G2: did the researcher just press something and wait for an answer, or will it live under one cycle (about 15 s)? Holds. G3: does it carry a control on the row (a ring with cancel, a stop), or is it a run's verb ladder? Holds. Otherwise, if it is long-lived and ambient, it rolls. When unsure, it holds, because that is today's behaviour and cannot be worse than now. In code this is an exhaustive switch with no default, next to glyphKind, so a new variant cannot compile without the decision, and a table test pins every row.

Scenario catalogue

Eight situations, each playing a short script on a loop (the frame bar shows the time and the rule in force). Hover a row to pause it and see the tooltip. Strings are shipped English or German; "Picking up Signals…" is the owner's draft. Glyphs and the lens rows are stand-ins; German "Signale werden vorbereitet…" is the readiness doc's example and the German run ladder is a stand-in.

Commentary · evidence, communication risks, costs

Communication risks, and the rule that answers each

Risk	Answer	Status
A warning or error rolls away, or progress hides under it unseen	Errors hold (R1). Warnings roll, so nothing is hidden for more than one dwell (R2). Hover lists everything (R5).	decided (owner's rule)
A moving glyph is a moving click target	The glyph travels with its line, hover pauses, and the popover is also reachable from the row's context menu and accessibility actions (R7).	owner call; needs a hand check
Nothing says something else is running	No count (owner). The tooltip lists it, and the lens rows show the effect (R5, R9).	decided
"Is it finished?"	No message. The roll settles, the lens row turns available, VoiceOver stays silent (R4, R9).	owner call
The line reads as a promise	Rolling lines are present-tense activity or a count of work done, never an ETA. The ETA ladder holds and is the run's (R1).	decided
A truncated line sits on screen 5 s (German)	Hover pauses and shows the full text (R5). The shorter German phrase is still an open item in the readiness doc.	partly open
Roll and shimmer together	The shimmer starts once the line has settled.	owner call
A status that flashes	2 s floor (R6).	decided in principle
The ticker creeps	Cap of three (R3).	owner call
VoiceOver hears the roll	Static value, speak at start only (R9).	owner call; hand check
Reduce Motion loses information	Top-ranked holds; tooltip and lens rows carry the rest (R8).	owner call
A second window shows a different status	Accepted: the Signals status is window-scoped (readiness decision 1).	decided

Prior art: what I could and could not verify

Statuses: fetched = read this session; excerpt = only a search excerpt; none = nothing found. I found no shipping product that rolls between concurrent jobs in one status line. The verified convention is one ambient line plus a separate place that lists everything.

Product	What it does with several tasks	Source	Status
Xcode activity view	Shows progress of executing tasks, status messages and indicators. Silent on several at once: no cycling, count or expanding stated. I half remember a stack or cycle but did not verify it.	Xcode help	fetched, silent
Mail (Mac)	An Activity window to monitor progress; a few activities at the bottom of the sidebar (downloading, a large download paused to save battery, with resume); account offline at the end of the Favorites bar. Silent on several at once.	Mail help; forum	fetched / excerpt
Photos (Mac)	One status area: item count, last update, Pause/Resume, a count of items that could not sync with a View door. No rotation described.	Apple Support	excerpt
HIG, Progress indicators	Silent on concurrency. Keep indicators moving; avoid labelling a spinner on macOS; be accurate and succinct.	HIG	fetched
HIG, Motion	Gratuitous motion distracts; avoid motion on frequent interactions; make motion optional.	HIG	fetched
Apple, reduced-motion criteria	Decorative motion stops; motion that carries a status change is replaced by something like a dissolve, a highlight fade or a colour shift, not removed.	App Store Connect Help	fetched
WCAG 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide	Auto-updating information that starts by itself beside other content needs a way to pause, stop or hide it, unless essential. Hover-to-pause alone is mouse-only.	W3C	fetched
GitHub checks, Time Machine, Finder copy, Safari downloads, Music, iOS Mail, Linear, Slack	Nothing usable found. Not claimed either way.	n/a	none

What the repo already says

§5 of design-desktop-project-status.md says never two conditions on one line, with one sanctioned exception. This design keeps §5 for every holder and amends it only for rollers, where two conditions share a line in time, not in space.
The comment on SidebarSubtitleText.tooltip names "a cycling departure-board line" as the intended direction, with no design doc behind it. The project-icon split-flap (design-project-icons.md) is the nearest house motion vocabulary.
Shimmer is .running only today; readiness decision 5 extends it to Signals. About 22 characters fit at 240 pt.

Costs and a native version

Size: about 3 to 4 working days, a plausible range of 2.5 to 5, from reading the code, not from building it. The model and clock are easy; keeping an animation alive across outline reloads is the cost.
Model: SubtitleVariant.rollPolicy (exhaustive, no default, beside glyphKind), a resolveAll returning holders first then rollers, and a pure clock with an injected time source.
Reload churn (the main risk): update() calls a full reloadData(), which rebuilds cells. Keep the clock in the controller keyed by project and refresh a visible rollable row in place (refreshRowsAroundRename is the precedent). A throttle on count ticks is a reasonable add-on, not the fix. Measure how often update() fires while Screens reads before committing.
Accessibility tests: a pure "set before and after to announcement" function (a roll gives none); a seam on NSAccessibility.post counting posts over several cycles; the accessibility value byte-identical across a roll; then one by-hand VoiceOver pass.
Process: the R114 gate wants explicit owner approval of the mockup before any UX build, the beta policy says almost no new features (the board card says Could, post-launch), and the first merge would want a flag.

The owner decides.

Free-play bench

Same engine as the catalogue, with job toggles. Frame "a" is today's single-winner line; "b" is the roll under the rules above. Toggle a job off to finish it; the floor and the roll rules apply.

Other variant (crossfade): not chosen, kept for the record