What is expo-thinking-orbs?

expo-thinking-orbs is a small React Native library that gives you animated "thinking orb" loading indicators for AI and agent app interfaces. When a chatbot or assistant is working, searching, or composing a reply, you want a visual cue that something is happening. This package provides six of those cues, each a cluster of dots that animates in a distinct pattern. It is a React Native port of a web project by Jakub Antalik, who designed the original animations and the math behind them. The six states each map to a verb and a motion. "Working" shows particles drifting along tilted orbits. "Searching" sweeps a scan line across a dotted globe. "Solving" scrambles bands of dots and then clicks them back into place. "Listening" rolls a waveform through horizontal rings. "Composing" undulates a multi-band ribbon. "Shaping" morphs a dotted outline from circle to triangle to square. You pick a state with a single prop and set a size in points, and the component handles the rest. Installation is a one-liner if you are on Expo, pulling in three peer dependencies that do the actual rendering work. The orbs run entirely on the UI thread, which keeps React itself from doing per-frame work and helps the animations stay smooth. All orbs share a single clock, so multiple orbs on screen stay synchronized even if they mounted at different times. Theming is monochrome by default, dark dots on light backgrounds and light dots on dark ones, and it can follow the OS appearance or be pinned. You can also pass a custom color and the depth shading is rebuilt around it. A speed prop scales the animation, a paused prop freezes on the current frame, and an accessibility label is set per state by default. The README notes one performance caveat: each orb mounts its own canvas, and a screen full of them can drop frames on mid-range Android devices. A hook is provided to draw several orbs into a single canvas for those cases. The full README is longer than what was shown.