[gustmrg]

Motion had built up on the surfaces people use most, and at that frequency it reads as delay. Switching conversations replayed an entrance on every visible message, tabs and settings sections slid on each switch, and search animated open on Ctrl+K. Those now change instantly. Menus and the details panel still fade, so they don't pop in, but they no longer move or scale.

Every animation went through one test: an animation stays only if it has a purpose and runs rarely enough to keep it. The reason for each change is below.

Removed

What	Where	Why
Message entrance (160ms fade and rise)	message-view.tsx, .message-steps in aura.css	Seen 100+ times a day. Rows are keyed by message, so opening a conversation replayed it across the whole transcript.
Tab content slide	wisp-details.tsx, circle-details.tsx	Core navigation, and repeated tab switches read as lag.
Sliding tab and segmented control indicator	ui/tabs.tsx, ui/segmented-control.tsx	Same navigation class. Content now changes instantly, so a 200ms glide would lag behind it.
Search open and close, including the backdrop	search-dialog.tsx	Opened by Ctrl+K. A keyboard action should answer immediately.
Composer + menu open and close	chat-composer.tsx	Also opened by Ctrl+Shift+Enter, and used while typing.
Usage report slide on period change	usage-settings-section.tsx	Functional data the person is reading. The slide says nothing about the values.
Settings section slide	10 settings sections, connections-panel.tsx	No purpose: it always slid forward, even when going back.

Reduced

What	Now	Why
Dropdown, Popover, Select, Context menu, Tooltip	Fade only, no zoom or slide	Seen tens of times a day. The fade alone prevents a jarring pop.
Details panel and Wisp profile (panel-in)	Fade only, 150ms (was 170ms with an 8px slide)	Opened often, and the fade carries the same meaning.
Avatar color swatch hover	Opacity, 100ms (was scale-[1.08])	Scale added nothing that opacity doesn't.
Connection progress bar	250ms (was 500ms)	Over the 300ms budget for UI motion.
Button and TabsTab	transition-colors (was transition-all)	Press offset and focus ring now respond instantly.

Cleanup

• Removed the unused --animate-working-pulse token and working-pulse keyframes.
• Removed the placed ref in SegmentedControl, which only skipped the first slide.
• Removed slideDirection and slide state, and the key={report.period} that existed only to replay the slide. The report's children hold no state.
• Removed origin-(--transform-origin) from surfaces that no longer scale, the Radix-only data-[state=delayed-open] classes on Tooltip, and a stale transition: none on the phone's .workspace-sidebar.

Kept on purpose

• The connection flow's forward and back slides (connection-gate.tsx, connection-screen.tsx, ssh-prompt-dialog.tsx): rare, and they show direction.
• message-highlight: it shows where a search jump landed.
• Working indicators (halo, subline pulse, typing dots, step spinner, Wisp sway) and the recording pulse: they show state and stop when the work does.
• The Wisp's idle blink: part of its character, and it comes from the design studies in docs/design/.
• First-time and occasional moments: the empty conversation intro, the model step in onboarding, regular dialogs, the update toast, and the splash fade.
• Hover and focus color changes of 150ms or less, chevron rotation, the toggle switch, and the accordion.

Testing

• npm run typecheck, npm run lint, npm run format:check, and npm run build pass. Lint reports 2 warnings that are already on main, in the storage settings components.
• npm test on Node 22: 2443 tests pass. No new tests, since this only removes motion and jsdom can't observe it.
• tsc output was rebuilt from a clean dist-electron.
• Built app with the fake agent, measured over DevTools:
  • Reopening a conversation with 7 messages runs 0 message-in animations.
  • Ctrl+K search and its backdrop report animation-name: none, and search unmounts straight away on Escape.
  • The composer + menu reports animation-name: none.
  • A context menu reports --tw-enter-scale: 1, so it only fades.
  • The details panel's panel-in animates only opacity for 150ms.
  • Tab switches run only a text color transition, and the tab indicator has no transition.

To check by hand before merging:

• Hover and speed feel right on a real display: switching conversations and tabs, opening menus and tooltips, and the color swatches in the avatar editor.
• The phone layout works on a device: the list, a conversation, and the Wisp profile, which now only fades in.

Not in this PR

Tracked in SWE-268:

• A working Wisp can show several indicators at once (subline pulse, typing dots, step spinner, Wisp sway). They may be redundant, but they are state indicators, so that is a design call.
• The usage skeleton pulse may flash when a local report loads quickly. That needs timing on a real machine before removing it.

Refs SWE-268