Attention follows understanding, not activity.注意力跟随理解,而非活动。 Attention follows understanding, not activity.
Today's agentic interfaces spend attention rendering tool calls — searching, reading, executing. But the tool call is the theater of cognition, not cognition itself. This design language re-allocates the user's scarce attention to the latent structure of the problem, and to the agent's evolving, evidence-grounded understanding of it. It is a general language: whether the agent is diagnosing, planning, writing, advising, acting on your behalf, or building you an app — the understanding is the subject.
Nearly every product in the field — including the systems hailed as the frontier of Generative UI — is fundamentally tool-call-rooted: the UI is generated from tool output, and reasoning is squeezed into a footnote beside the action, an after-the-fact justification. Latent inverts this hierarchy. Actions recede into a peripheral, recallable trace; the agent's evolving understanding takes the main stage.
Cognition is the subject, graded by evidence strength; the tool call collapses to a single traceable line. Attention aligns to "what changed in the understanding."
认知是主体,按证据强度分级着色;工具调用收成可溯源的一行。注意力对齐到“理解发生了什么变化”。
The Attention Model
架构 / The Attention Model
Three zones, one proportion三个区域,一种比例
Every agentic interface decomposes into three attention zones. Their visual weight is a hard constraint of the design language, not a layout preference.
每个 agentic 界面被分解为三个注意力区域。它们的视觉权重是设计语言的硬约束,不是布局偏好。
① Understanding Surface · persistent · the subject① Understanding Surface · 持久 · 主体
A problem state that persists and is continually rewritten. When new evidence arrives, it changes — and that change (a hypothesis promoted, a hypothesis refuted) is the meaningful event. This is the thing you "come back to check" in the age of ambient / background agents.
Human intervention is a core feature, not an edge case.
人类干预是核心特性,不是边缘情况。
The Grounding Contract
认识论纪律 / The Grounding Contract
The spine against reasoning theater对抗 reasoning theater 的脊梁
This is what sets Latent apart from every existing approach, and it is its safety floor. The rendered latent is not the real latent — chain-of-thought is often after-the-fact rationalization, and the prettier it is, the more easily it gilds unfaithful cognition with the gold leaf of "trustworthy." So: only falsifiable, evidence-grounded cognition deserves the main attention. Anything that wants the main stage must be one of three legitimate forms.
Must carry: the open item / what it would take to resolve it
必须携带:待查项 / 解决它需要什么
This contract is exactly your five-layer diagnostic ontology: the upper ontological layers (hypotheses, conclusions) are the subject on stage, but every one of them must have a thread tied back down to the Observable Primitives below. Reasoning theater is dangerous precisely because its narrative floats free; the Grounding Contract uses "must be falsifiable, must land on evidence" to keep free-floating assertions off the main stage.
Latent does not use color for decoration. Color is a meaning-bearing dimension: it encodes the epistemic state of a cognitive element. See gold and you know "grounded / fairly certain"; see blue and you know "the model changed its mind" — blue is a cue color (worth noticing), not a red error. Changing your mind is a good thing and shouldn't be treated as an error warning.
depth layer · rising = floating toward the surface
深度层 · 抬升=浮向水面
ink
cognitive text · #ECF1F7
认知文本 · #ECF1F7
Foundations — Type
基础 / Foundations — 字体
Three voices三种声音
Type is divided by role: the agent's cognitive "voice," the interface's functional text, and evidence / provenance as instrument readouts. The voice uses serif, because thought should look deliberated; evidence uses monospace, because it should look like a verifiable instrument readout.
A language of depth: surfacing and sinking深度的语言:浮现与沉降
Motion serves the metaphor: latent is depth (潛). Understanding surfaces from the depths; confidence settles; refuted hypotheses sink. Movement is never mere decoration — it narrates the transition of epistemic state. (hover to see)
New understanding rises from below, blur resolving to clarity. Appearance = floating toward the surface.
新理解从下方升起,由模糊转清晰。出现 = 浮向水面。
new hypothesis
SettleSettle 凝定
A hypothesis accumulates evidence and is promoted to a conclusion: tracking tightens, aqua turns to gold.
假设积累证据、提升为结论:字距收紧,青转金。
conf 0.34 → 0.89
SinkSink 沉降
A refuted hypothesis descends, desaturates, folds away — but is not deleted (auditable).
被推翻的假设下沉、去饱和、折叠——但不删除(可审计)。
H1 · DNS jitter
PulsePulse 拐点
On a change of mind / aha, a brief flash of blue — cueing a valuable turn (the most faithful part of the latent, not an error).
改主意/啊哈时短促闪一下蓝光——提示一次有价值的转变(latent 中最忠实的部分,不是出错)。
↻ changed mind↻ 改主意
Components (@latent/react · live render)
组件库 / Components(@latent/react · 实时渲染)
Core components核心组件
The components below are rendered live by @latent/react; every prop is a z.infer<> subtype of @latent/schema. Open any provenance to see "de-emphasized ≠ hidden" — the tool call recedes visually, but is always one click away and auditable.
A true-to-form network incident diagnosis, driven by a validated CognitiveState instance. The user story above sets out who, why, and what's being done here; by default the interface shows the current understanding the SRE sees on arrival (conclusion first). To watch how it formed, hit "Replay" (demo); toggle Trace at the top right to see the "two personas."
Pin down the root cause of intermittent P99 spikes on core-pay and prescribe a fix
Cognition emergesP99 12ms → 340ms
Your question
Alert: core-pay P99 12ms→340ms, intermittent over 40min. Find the root cause, stop the bleeding, and leave an auditable trail
My read
still forming — don't trust me yet…
Still unsure / for you to decide
0.3% TCP retransmission on the target segment (reclassified as a symptom)
If the retransmission spikes led the latency spikes in time, this would be promoted to the cause; the observed lag means it is a symptom
I considered but ruled out 1 idea ▾
Proportionality
伸缩 / Proportionality
Understanding scales with complexity理解态随复杂度伸缩
"For all AI apps" means some tasks are cognitively shallow. The mass of the understanding should scale with the epistemic complexity of the problem — don't put up a hypothesis board for "format this JSON."
“给所有 AI 应用”意味着有些任务认知很浅。理解态的体量应随问题的认识论复杂度伸缩——别给“格式化这段 JSON”摆一块假设板。
Low latent · direct taskLow latent · 直接任务
Format, rewrite, single-step retrieval. The understanding collapses to one grounded conclusion + provenance. No hypothesis board.
Live: one and the same @latent/react + ProportionalView, scaling automatically across three tiers of complexity — low latent collapses to one grounded line + provenance, high latent unfolds the full hypothesis board.
For a high-frequency small-message internal path, gRPC beats REST/JSON on latency and bandwidth
Decision
confidence
0.71self-consist
◆ p50 latency -38% · bandwidth -55%
▸ provenance · observable primitives · 1 step
◆ verifiable · re-runnable check
tc:benchgRPC p50 -38%, bandwidth -55%
re-exec ▸ bun bench/rpc.ts --pattern small-high-freq
REST's debuggability / caching ecosystem is easier on the edge-gateway side
Tradeoff
confidence
0.45self-report
What would change itIf the team already has a gRPC observability toolchain, this edge disappears; the current toolchain is HTTP-centric, so it remains a tradeoff.
gRPC client maturity for the target languages isn't verified
Option
To resolveCheck gRPC codegen / reconnection / interceptor support for the languages actually in use.
high High latent · diagnosis / research — full hypothesis board + inflections + sinks + provenance
Inflection · Aha
Default LRU → LFU + a capacity ceiling for hot-skewed workloads
Access is strongly hot-skewed, and LFU's hit rate is markedly higher than LRU's in the load test.
Adopt LFU eviction + a 4GB capacity ceiling + TTL as a backstop
Decision
confidence
0.80self-consist
◆ LFU hit rate +12pp, within the memory budget
▸ provenance · observable primitives · 1 step
◆ verifiable · re-runnable check
tc:benchLFU hit rate higher than LRU
re-exec ▸ bun bench/cache.ts --policy lfu --cap 4g
Cold-start warm-up strategy undecided
Risk
To resolveConfirm whether startup warm-up is needed; it affects hit rate during release and upstream pressure.
The 6 archetype demos below spread out exactly along this axis, across different agent types.
下方 6 个原型 demo 正是沿这条轴、跨不同 agent 类型铺开。
Archetypes
适用原型 / Archetypes
One language, across every kind of agent一套语言,跨各种 agent
Diagnosis is just one archetype. The beauty of the Grounding Contract is that it holds across archetypes: a decision, a requirement understanding, an action taken on your behalf that occupies the main stage must equally be grounded (hung on evidence / criteria / your own words), or marked tentative (with "what would change it"), or left as an honest open. Content role is expressed on an orthogonal kind axis (decision / plan / requirement / option / answer / risk…); color still encodes epistemic state.
The three-zone model scales up to the app level: every agentic product is composed of five attention zones, where visual weight is a hard rule, not a layout preference. The macro inversion — where others put the tool-call stream on the main stage, Latent puts "understanding" there, with artifacts (code / canvas) and activity (terminal / render queue) receding to the periphery.
Attention weight: Stage > Artifact > { Context, Activity }; Intervention is always reachable. The two real products below are laid out with the same grammar:
The one root law. Visual weight goes to "what was understood / what changed in the understanding," not "which step was executed." Everything else follows from it.
The Grounding Contract. An element entering the main attention must be a grounded claim, a hypothesis (with confidence and falsifiability conditions), or an open question. Free-floating assertions are kept out — this is the spine against reasoning theater.
Grounding Contract。进入主注意力的元素必须是 grounded claim、hypothesis(带置信度与可证伪条件)、或 open question 三者之一。悬空断言被挡在门外——这是对抗 reasoning theater 的脊梁。
03
Surface inflections, sink narration
浮现拐点,沉降叙述
Highlight backtracks / ahas / refutations first — research confirms these are the most faithful, most information-dense parts of the latent. Sink procedural narration like "I'm reading a file" (the breeding ground for unfaithfulness) to the periphery.
The tool call recedes visually, but provenance is always one click away and reconstructible. At financial customers, "which data did the agent touch" is a compliance question; auditability is non-negotiable.
Confidence, open questions, and downgrade rationale are all rendered explicitly, not smoothed over. An honest "I'm not sure" is more credible — and safer — than a confident error.
Actions flow past and vanish; the understanding stays, accumulates, and can be revisited. This is exactly the object users "come back to check" in the age of ambient / background agents.
The Operator view (latent-led, default) serves end users; the Trace view (tool-call-led) serves debugging and audit. One toggle dissolves the "transparency vs. cognition-first" tension instead of forcing a choice.
Operator 视图(latent 主导,默认)服务终端用户;Trace 视图(tool-call 主导)服务调试与审计。一个 toggle 化解“透明 vs 认知优先”的张力,而非二选一。
Voice
语态 / Voice
Epistemic honesty, not theater认识论诚实,而非剧场
The design language also governs how the agent speaks. Latent's voice refuses the "hard at work" performance, and refuses to dress after-the-fact narration up as insight. It states confidence, marks the unknown, and stays honest about "the gap between narration and computation."
"Let me dive deep and analyze this complex problem…"
“让我深入分析一下这个复杂的问题……”
"Carefully examining all possibilities, please hold on."
“正在仔细检查所有可能性,请稍候。”
"After rigorous reasoning, I'm certain the root cause is…"
“经过缜密推理,我确信根因是……”
"I've thoroughly investigated the network layer."
“我已经全面排查了网络层。”
◆ Grounded voice◆ Grounded 语态
"Two hypotheses in play: network layer / application layer. The former has higher confidence."
“两个在押假设:网络层 / 应用层。前者置信更高。”
"DNS ruled out (resp <2ms). Retransmits are suspect but don't align in time."
“DNS 已排除(resp <2ms)。重传可疑但时间不对齐。”
"Root cause 0.89: GC pause. Retransmits are a symptom. One open: why only instance-7."
“根因 0.89:GC 停顿。重传是症状。一个未决:为何仅 instance-7。”
"I changed my mind: retransmits lag the latency, so I've reclassified them as a symptom."
“我改了主意:重传滞后延迟,故重判为症状。”
Governance / Anti-patterns
治理 / Anti-patterns
Red lines for adoption采纳红线
When any team adopts Latent, the following are anti-patterns that quietly betray the core of the language. They look like "showing the reasoning," but in fact they rebuild the theater.
Raw reasoning unfiltered by the Grounding Contract is a breeding ground for reasoning theater. It must be parsed into the three states grounded / hypothesis / open.