Flow Cue

Definition

A Flow Cue is the visible expression of translucent-assistance.

It is not a task assignment, not a notification stack, and not a command. It is a quiet next movement, shown in the user’s peripheral vision, that helps them stay in flow-experience without reconstructing the work from memory.

A Flow Cue should be noticeable without becoming interruptive.

What a good cue carries

A good Flow Cue makes five things clear:

Element	Why it matters
Why this is appearing	Prevents “system says so” theatre
What job is being surfaced	Makes the cue concrete
What mode it is in	human-only, prepare-only, or delegable
How confident Whisper is	Makes confidence-signal honest and job-specific
What the human can do next	Accept, adapt, ignore, dismiss, or delegate

First five complaint cues for prototyping

These five are the selected first cues worth prototyping for the complaint exemplar. They are chosen to test the breadth of the cue model, not because they are already validated.

Cue	Why it appears	Mode	Confidence
Acknowledgement overdue by 2 business days	Initial response expectation not yet met	delegable	high
Final response is blocked by missing timeline from service owner	A required internal input is absent	human-only for the judgement; delegable for the chase	medium
A similar complaint used Response Pattern B	Prior resolution pattern may help prepare the draft	prepare-only	medium
Risk of missing final response deadline in 3 days	Lifecycle pressure is rising	human-only	high
This issue pattern has appeared in 4 complaints this month	Possible systemic signal, not just a single-case issue	human-only	low-to-medium

The set is deliberately mixed:

• one immediate service pressure cue
• one blocker cue
• one precedent / preparation cue
• one deadline risk cue
• one systemic pattern cue

First-pass visual grouping

In the concern workspace, cues should cluster into a small number of glanceable groups:

flowchart TB
  A[Do now] --> A1[Acknowledgement overdue]
  A --> A2[Deadline risk in 3 days]
  B[Prepare with Whisper] --> B1[Draft acknowledgement]
  B --> B2[Find similar response pattern]
  C[Blocked] --> C1[Waiting for internal timeline]
  D[Human-only] --> D1[Decide complaint outcome]
  D --> D2[Approve final wording]

The grouping matters because an ungrouped cue rail collapses into a noisy list.

What it is not

• Not a notification centre
• Not a disguised task inbox
• Not an approval step in softer language
• Not a recommendation engine optimised for clicks or engagement
• Not a command that demands dismissal before work can continue

Design tests it implies

• Can the cue be ignored without penalty?
• Does it reduce searching or remembering?
• Does it feel quieter than the equivalent task or alert?
• Is the boundary between human-only, prepare-only, and delegable obvious?
• Does the confidence label help the human decide what to do next?