> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://invoca-5bd45748-mintlify-17ed87db.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Welcome / empty state
> The first-run moment before an agentic feature has been asked anything, and the no-results moment after a run returns genuinely nothing — both distinct from loading, error, and each other.
**Exemplar page — first pass, entirely proposal.** No Invoca product ships this pattern
today. Nothing below is code fact or measured behavior — it is a proposal offered for
review. See [Coverage, stated honestly](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/overview#coverage-stated-honestly).
## What it is
This page covers two moments, both specific to an agentic feature and both distinct from a
plain [empty state](/invoca-design-system/components/data-display/empty-state):
**Welcome** is what a marketer sees the first time they open an AI panel that hasn't been asked
anything yet — a natural-language search over call data, or a summarization panel on a call
that hasn't been analyzed. There is no prior run to show, so the panel's only job is to set
expectations: what this feature can do, what it can't, and how to start. A user who doesn't yet
know that Signal AI summarizes transcripts but can't change routing or settings needs to learn
that here, before they ask for the wrong thing and get refused.
**No-results** is what the same marketer sees after they've asked something — "show me calls
about a refund dispute from last week" — and the search, summarize, or
[recommend](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/actions/recommend) run completed correctly and
found genuinely nothing. The run worked. There's simply nothing to show. That distinction —
worked-but-empty versus broken, loading, or refused — is the entire content of this half of the
page, and it's the one a plain empty state doesn't have to carry, because a deterministic
region either has data or it doesn't, with no "the search itself might have been wrong" question
attached.
Both moments are visually related — both replace the same panel's content with a message plus
optional next step — and both are covered on this page because both carry the same AI-specific
obligation a static empty region never has: **telling the user something about the feature's
scope**, not just about the current state of the data.
## Choose this when / choose something else when
| Situation | Do this instead | Why |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| The region has nothing to show and no AI feature is involved | [Empty and zero states](/invoca-design-system/patterns/empty-and-zero-states) and [EmptyState](/invoca-design-system/components/data-display/empty-state) | Those pages cover the deterministic case: a table with no rows, a list with nothing created yet. Neither needs to set capability expectations, and neither risks being confused with "still thinking" — a deterministic empty region was never going to produce a result on its own. This page exists because an AI panel's emptiness carries an extra question a plain one doesn't: did the run actually finish, and does the user understand what it can do at all? |
| A run is still in progress | The [Working](#outcome-states) treatment — a [Skeleton](/invoca-design-system/components/feedback/skeleton) or [Spinner](/invoca-design-system/components/feedback/spinner) | This pattern renders only once a run has definitively finished with nothing, or before one has started. Showing it while a run is still going is the single most damaging mistake this page exists to prevent — see [TITAN-AIWELCOME-01](#constraints). |
| The request had more than one plausible reading, not zero results | [Disambiguate](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/actions/disambiguate) | Ambiguity and emptiness are different problems — one has too many candidate answers, the other has none. |
| There's nothing notable to recommend this period | [Recommend](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/actions/recommend)'s own [Empty](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/actions/recommend#outcome-states) outcome state | Recommend's empty case composes this pattern's no-results treatment; document the copy specifics there, not by duplicating this page. |
## Agency tier
**Not applicable — this isn't an acting surface at all.** Welcome and no-results are the moment
before a run starts or the moment after one finishes with nothing; nothing is proposed, drafted,
or acted on in either state, so there's no authority to name. The agency tier belongs to
whatever the user does next — the [Search](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/actions/search),
[Summarize](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/actions/summarize), or
[Recommend](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/actions/recommend) run this panel leads into.
## Anatomy
Welcome:
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ◆ │
│ Ask about your calls │
│ Signal AI can summarize transcripts and │
│ surface Signals. It can't change routing │
│ or settings. │
│ │
│ [ "Show me calls about billing" ] │
│ [ "Summarize today's calls" ] │
│ │
│ [______ Ask a question ______________] [→] │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
No-results:
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ (illustration) │
│ No calls matched "refund dispute" │
│ Try a broader date range, or rephrase │
│ your question. │
│ │
│ [ Rephrase ] [ Clear filters ] │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
| # | Part | Component | Required |
| - | ------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 1 | AI identifier mark (welcome only) | See [Identifiers](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/identifiers/avatar) | Yes, for welcome |
| 2 | Illustration (no-results only) | [EmptyState](/invoca-design-system/components/data-display/empty-state)'s `search` illustration | Yes, for no-results — never the loading or error illustration |
| 3 | Heading | Text content, no component | Yes |
| 4 | Scope-setting line — what it can and can't do (welcome only) | Text content, no component | Yes — see [TITAN-AIWELCOME-02](#constraints) |
| 5 | Example prompts (welcome only) | [Tag](/invoca-design-system/components/data-display/tag) or [Button](/invoca-design-system/components/actions/button) `outlined`, clickable | Recommended |
| 6 | Input | [Input](/invoca-design-system/components/forms/input) | Yes, for welcome |
| 7 | Next-step actions (no-results only) | [Button](/invoca-design-system/components/actions/button) | Recommended — see [TITAN-EMP-05](/invoca-design-system/components/data-display/empty-state#constraints) |
The no-results variant composes [EmptyState](/invoca-design-system/components/data-display/empty-state)
directly — same illustration-plus-title-plus-supporting-line shape that component already
defines. What's added is the AI-specific obligation: the heading names what was searched for, in
the user's own words, not a generic "no results."
## Outcome states
| State | Treatment |
| -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Working | **Not applicable to this pattern — by construction.** This pattern renders only before a run starts or once one has definitively finished. A run in progress is a [Skeleton](/invoca-design-system/components/feedback/skeleton) or [Spinner](/invoca-design-system/components/feedback/spinner), never this pattern's copy or illustration. |
| Streaming / partial | **Not applicable**, for the same reason — nothing here is a partial result. |
| Confident and right | **Not applicable.** No output was produced in either the welcome or no-results case; there's nothing to be right about. |
| Confident and wrong | **The no-results claim is itself a claim, and it can be wrong.** A search that says "no calls matched" when a manual filter over the same data turns up results is a confidently wrong empty state — the failure looks identical to a correctly empty one. The user notices only by trying the equivalent manual path (a plain filter, a direct table view) and finding what the AI search missed, or by already knowing the data should be there. Nothing about the no-results screen itself signals that the search might have missed something — see [TITAN-AIWELCOME-04](#constraints). |
| Uncertain | If the search was cut short (timeout, partial index) rather than exhaustive, the copy says "the search may be incomplete" rather than a flat "no calls matched" — see [TITAN-AIWELCOME-05](#constraints). |
| Refused | **Not applicable to this page.** A declined request (disallowed query, out-of-scope ask) is the invoking action's own [Refused](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/actions/disambiguate#outcome-states) state, documented there — this pattern only covers a request that ran and legitimately found nothing. |
| Empty | This **is** the no-results half of this pattern — a run that completed and genuinely found nothing to show. |
| Interrupted | A cancelled or dropped run must not render as no-results. Show that the run was stopped, not that it finished empty — conflating the two tells the user a search happened when it didn't. |
| Degraded | If the empty result came from a fallback path (keyword-only matching instead of full semantic search), the no-results copy discloses that the full search wasn't run, since the full version might have found something. |
| Rate-limited / over budget | If the search stopped early because it hit a budget, the copy says "search stopped early" — never "no calls matched," which claims a completeness the run didn't have. |
| Stale | **Minor relevance.** A cached no-results answer can be stale if new calls have since arrived; where results are cached, show when the search last ran. |
Disclosure & recourse
1. **Does the user know this is AI, at the moment it matters?** Yes for welcome — the
scope-setting copy names the feature and is the disclosure itself. For no-results, the
framing ("your question didn't match anything") makes clear a query was interpreted, not
just filtered.
2. **What did it use?** For no-results, state what was searched — which calls, which date
range — so "nothing matched" is checkable against a concrete scope, not a vague "your data."
3. **How sure is it, and does that change behavior?** For no-results, an exhaustive search says
so plainly ("no calls matched"); an incomplete one says so differently (see
[Uncertain](#outcome-states)) and that difference changes what recourse is offered.
4. **How does the user check it?** The user can always fall back to a manual filter or the
underlying [Table](/invoca-design-system/components/data-display/table) view to verify a
no-results claim themselves — see [Filtering and search](/invoca-design-system/patterns/filtering-and-search).
5. **How does the user correct it?** Rephrasing or broadening (no-results) and trying an example
prompt (welcome) are the two correction paths. Neither persists as a standing preference.
6. **How does the user get out?** The manual, non-AI path — the plain table or filter view —
is always available and unaffected by anything this panel did or didn't find.
## Reference
No model, prompt, tool schema, latency budget, or cost has been defined for this pattern.
## Evaluation
Not evaluated. No eval set exists for whether "no results" is ever produced incorrectly (a
false empty) versus correctly.
## Content
| Element | ✅ | ❌ |
| -------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------- |
| Welcome heading | Ask about your calls | AI Assistant |
| Welcome scope line | Signal AI can summarize transcripts and surface Signals. It can't change routing or settings. | I can help with almost anything! |
| Example prompt | "Summarize today's calls" | Try me! |
| No-results heading | No calls matched "refund dispute" | No results |
| No-results supporting line | Try a broader date range, or rephrase your question. | Something went wrong. |
Never reuse [EmptyState](/invoca-design-system/components/data-display/empty-state)'s generic
fallback copy ("No Records found!") for a no-results moment — it doesn't name what was searched
for and reads as broken rather than as a completed, empty search. Per
[TITAN-EMPTYCOPY-03](/invoca-design-system/content/empty-state-copy#constraints), the no-results
wording names the query; per this page's own
[TITAN-AIWELCOME-02](#constraints), the welcome wording names what the feature can't do, not
only what it can.
## Accessibility
* The transition from a loading region to the no-results message is announced via a polite live
region on completion — not token-by-token, and not silently, so a screen reader user can tell
the difference between "still running" and "finished, found nothing."
* An indeterminate wait before either state renders needs a non-visual equivalent to a spinner —
accessible status text, not a purely visual animation.
* The scope-setting line and the no-results heading are both real text, never baked into an
illustration — matches [TITAN-EMP-07](/invoca-design-system/components/data-display/empty-state#constraints).
* When a no-results screen replaces a loading region, focus moves to the heading so a screen
reader user lands on the result, not left on a control that no longer has anything to act on.
* Example prompts (welcome) and next-step actions (no-results) are both reachable by keyboard in
visual order.
## Constraints
| ID | Constraint | Rationale |
| ---------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **TITAN-AIWELCOME-01** | This pattern never renders while a run is in progress. | Showing "no results" or a welcome message over a search that's still running tells the user something false about whether their request was heard. |
| **TITAN-AIWELCOME-02** | The welcome moment states what the feature can't do, not only what it can. | A user who only learns the feature's strengths will ask for something out of scope and get an unexplained refusal instead of a set expectation. |
| **TITAN-AIWELCOME-03** | The no-results heading names the specific request that returned nothing, in the user's words. | "No calls matched 'refund dispute'" is checkable; "No results" gives the user nothing to verify a mis-scoped search against. |
| **TITAN-AIWELCOME-04** | A no-results screen and a run cancelled before completion use visibly and verbally different treatments. | Conflating "found nothing" with "never finished" hides a run that may need to be retried behind a claim that it was exhaustive. |
| **TITAN-AIWELCOME-05** | A no-results claim states whether the underlying search was exhaustive or cut short (timeout, fallback, budget). | "No calls matched" implies completeness the run may not have had; overstating it costs the user a result that existed but wasn't found. |
| **TITAN-AIWELCOME-06** | Example prompts on the welcome screen reflect jobs the feature actually does today, never an aspirational capability. | An example prompt the feature can't yet fulfill teaches the wrong lesson at the first interaction. |
| **TITAN-AIWELCOME-07** | The no-results state never reuses a generic fallback empty-state message with no reference to what was searched. | See [Content](#content) — a message that doesn't name the query reads as a broken load, not a completed search. |
## Divergences
Not applicable — nothing is shipped yet to diverge from.
## Gaps
* Whether the welcome screen's example prompts should be static or drawn dynamically from what
the specific account or user has actually asked successfully before is undecided.
* Whether a no-results moment should offer to fall back to a broader, AI-assisted retry (e.g.,
automatically widening the date range) or only manual recourse is undecided.
* Whether "the search may be incomplete" (see [Uncertain](#outcome-states)) needs its own
distinct visual treatment from a fully exhaustive no-results screen, or whether the copy
difference alone is sufficient, is undecided.
* How this pattern's welcome moment differs, if at all, from an
[Initial CTA](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/wayfinders/initial-cta) for the same
feature is not fully resolved — the working distinction on this page is that Initial CTA is a
one-time invitation attached to a specific piece of content, while welcome is the standing
state of a panel with nothing asked yet, but the boundary hasn't been tested against a real
product surface.
## Volatility
This page assumes an agentic feature can distinguish, internally, between "ran and found
nothing" and "didn't finish" — that distinction is what
[TITAN-AIWELCOME-04](#constraints) depends on, and it doesn't hold for every possible
implementation (a system that times out silently may not know which case it's in). Dated
2026-09-02; revisit on the first real implementation of any search, summarize, or recommend
panel, and whenever [EmptyState](/invoca-design-system/components/data-display/empty-state)'s
own known issues (its fallback copy, its heading-level defects) are resolved, since this page's
no-results variant composes that component directly.
## Related
* [AI Experience overview](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/overview) — vocabulary, agency
tiers, and the six disclosure questions this page answers
* [Disambiguate](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/actions/disambiguate) — too many candidate
answers, rather than none
* [Recommend](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/actions/recommend) — whose own empty case
hands off to this pattern's no-results treatment
* [Wayfinders: Initial CTA](/invoca-design-system/ai-experience/wayfinders/initial-cta) — a
related but distinct first-encounter moment; see [Gaps](#gaps) for the open boundary between
them
* [Empty and zero states](/invoca-design-system/patterns/empty-and-zero-states) and
[EmptyState](/invoca-design-system/components/data-display/empty-state) — the deterministic
version of this pattern, composed directly by the no-results variant
* [Filtering and search](/invoca-design-system/patterns/filtering-and-search) — the manual
fallback a user reaches for to check a no-results claim
* [Input](/invoca-design-system/components/forms/input), [Tag](/invoca-design-system/components/data-display/tag),
[Button](/invoca-design-system/components/actions/button) — the components this pattern
composes
## Why it works this way
**Setting scope at the first interaction is cheaper than absorbing a refusal later.** A user who
learns upfront that the feature summarizes and surfaces Signals but doesn't touch routing will
never ask it to change routing and get an unexplained no; the cost of stating a limitation once,
plainly, is far lower than the cost of a confused first request.
**Naming the specific, completed search is what keeps "nothing found" from reading as
"something broke."** The two states look almost identical — an empty region with a short
message — and the only thing separating a trustworthy empty result from a suspicious one is
whether the message proves a real search happened. A heading that repeats the user's own query
back to them is that proof; a generic "no results" is not.