ShimmerPlaceholder

Live

Behavior

• ·A light band sweeps the glyphs on a 2.8s loop (ambient-shimmer in theme.css), built from a gradient clipped to the text — the letters are the mask, so nothing sits on top of them.
• ·Rendered as an overlay, not the input's own placeholder attribute: a real placeholder cannot carry a background-clipped gradient. The input keeps an aria-label, so screen readers still announce it.
• ·Shown only while the field is empty; it disappears the moment the first character lands, so it never competes with what the user is writing.
• ·The travelling highlight is the ambient accent (--app-blue), blended into the foreground on its shoulders, with secondary text as the resting tone — so the placeholder carries the assistant's own colour and re-tints when the Foundation accent changes.
• ·Every ambient form uses it — the palette's search, the panel and dock follow-ups, and the quick ask pill — which is what makes an AI input recognisable as one.

When to use

• ·Any input that talks to the assistant, in any form factor.
• ·When a field should feel awake before it is used — the shimmer is presence, not decoration.

When not to

• ·Product inputs (settings, forms, filters) — a shimmering placeholder there claims an AI is listening when none is.
• ·Fields that already have a value, or read-only text; motion on stable content is noise.
• ·As a loading indicator — the orb's states carry progress, this only carries availability.