1 · Every async surface ships four states, not one. Loading, empty, error and offline are specified here as first-class designs. A screen that only has a happy path is not finished, and a spinner is not a loading state — skeletons preserve layout so nothing jumps when data lands.
2 · An empty state teaches. It names what would appear here, what triggers it, and the one action that moves the file forward. It never scolds and never invents urgency.
3 · An error state names the failure and the recovery. What failed, whether the data is safe, what is being retried and when, and what the reader can do now. Transient failures auto-clear on success; exhausted retries and write conflicts require explicit human resolution.
4 · Severity is never colour alone. Each banner carries an icon, a title and a written verdict alongside its wash, so the pattern survives monochrome and colour-vision deficiency. There is no side-stripe: the state lives in the whole container, not a decorative edge.
5 · A deadline state never lies. An overdue statutory clock renders in the danger role with the overrun stated — it can never resolve to a satisfied or green state. 45/180-day dates are not editable from a state; only an approved four-eyes override with a recorded legal basis moves one.
6 · Neela degrades honestly. When the assistant is unreachable the surface says so and falls back to the deterministic path, rather than presenting a stale or invented answer.
7 · Tokens only, both themes. A state gallery that can only be viewed in one theme is half a gallery. Every specimen reads from tokens.css; filled hub buttons take their matching --*-on foreground rather than a hardcoded white, which fails AA on every dark-theme hub fill. All data synthetic.