Skeleton screens that tell the truth

Skeletons should mirror the final layout, not an aspirational one. If tax lines appear late, the skeleton should reserve space or explicitly say they are pending. We sketch the honest sequence before tuning animation curves.

We also time skeletons against measured percentiles from your traces, not against marketing demos. If data usually arrives under three hundred milliseconds, an elaborate shimmer is noise.

Accessibility checks ride along: focus order, reduced motion preferences, and contrast on placeholder text. Fixes here often improve clarity for everyone, not only assistive tech users.

We leave a short filmstrip artifact for leadership—before and after—so prioritization does not depend on abstract arguments about polish.