Agent nesting — design options

A. Vertical rail

Single left rail anchors agents to the parent. No inner card, no divider. Icons 12px.

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Who runs into the behavior change

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B. Flush rows, dot-only status

Drop the agent avatar entirely. Status dot (6px) + title is enough. Indented 12px.

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Agents 2

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C. Inset panel

Agents live in a slightly darker recessed block — feels like a drawer, not a card-in-card.

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Agents · 2

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D. Inline summary row

Default state is a compact one-line summary. Click to expand. Reduces visual noise when scrolling.

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drafted agent-row redesign mockup at agent-row-design.html

Expanded state

how likely it is to aff… 8m

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E. Tree branch

Explicit hierarchy via L-connectors. Works well when nesting could grow deeper.

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drafted agent-row redesign mockup at agent-row-design.html

how likely it is to aff… 8m

fix low-severity spam now

F. Stacked pills

Agents feel like chips anchored to the task. Good for 1–3 agents. Compact vertical footprint.

fix-notification-suites

stably fix-notification-suites

drafted agent-row redesign mockup at agent-row-design.html

how likely it is to aff… 8m

fix low-severity spam now

What changed across every option

Agent avatar shrunk: 14px sparkle → 11–12px status glyph. In most options the vendor sparkle is removed entirely; the state glyph carries the signal.
No card-in-card. The inner "AGENTS" box with its own border is replaced by a rail, divider, inset panel, tree, or bare list.
Indent aligned under the task title, not offset between icons.
Row height: 22–24px instead of 30+.

My pick

A (rail) or B (flush + dot-only). A still communicates "these belong to the parent" visually. B is the leanest — best if users rarely need to distinguish agent vendor at the child level.