Understanding cards

In most AI products, the interaction surface is a chat window. You type, it types back, you type again, forever. This works for exploration but it's terrible for delivery. It asks you to read a paragraph every time you make a decision.

Black Box uses cards instead. A card is a small, structured surface with a clear question and a single primary action. You scan it, click, move on. The team never drowns you in text. The fewer decisions you touch, the better the UI is doing its job.

The five card types

1. Status cards

The team is doing something. The card shows you the specialist, the sub-task, and a live progress indicator. No action required. Status cards usually auto-collapse when the task completes.

Example. "Engineering is building your landing page — 30%."

2. Decision cards

The team needs a call you have to make. These are the ones that matter; they're what you opened the app for. A decision card has:

• A one-line question you can read in under three seconds.
• Enough context to answer without needing to ask follow-ups.
• Two or three clear buttons — Approve, Reject, Ask for changes.
• An expand-for-detail control if you want the long version.

Example. "Approve this outreach email to sarah@acme.com?" Attached: the email body, the reason it's being sent, and the source of the lead.

3. Delivery cards

The team finished something and is handing it to you. A delivery card has the outcome front and center — a URL, a document link, a count, a summary — and usually offers a next move.

Example. "Your landing page is live: https://sarah-marketing.up.railway.app. Want me to write a custom-domain guide too?"

4. Brief cards

Periodic summaries — morning briefs, end-of-week reports, Skill review cards. These are read-mostly; action is optional.

Example. "Yesterday we sent 12 outreach emails, got 3 opens and 1 reply. Want to see the reply?"

5. Connection cards

When the team needs access to a service you haven't connected yet — GitHub, Railway, Stripe, Google Calendar — a connection card appears. One click opens the OAuth flow or the right page; the card flips to green when the connection is live.

The color system

Colors tell you where a card sits in the lifecycle at a glance:

• Grey — informational, nothing to do.
• Gold — the team wants your attention. Read it when you can.
• Yellow — waiting on you. Action needed to move on.
• Green — done, shipped, or approved.
• Red — something broke. The CEO has a plain-English explanation and usually a one-click fix.

If you open the app and everything is grey or green, your team is flowing. Clear out the yellow, read any gold, and close the tab.

Where cards live

Cards appear in three places, in order of immediacy:

• Boardroom. Your home view. Active conversations and the freshest cards. Think of it as the CEO's desk.
• Approvals Inbox. All yellow cards across every Skill, sorted by priority. This is where you batch-clear approvals.
• Action Feed. Archive of status and delivery cards. Chronological. Scroll when you want to see what the team did yesterday, last week, last month.

How to respond fast

A few patterns you'll pick up in the first week:

• Batch mornings. Open the Approvals Inbox first thing, swipe through yellow cards while coffee brews. Most clear in under 10 minutes.
• Trust the defaults. The CEO picks a recommended action on every decision card. If you don't have strong opinions, approve. The evaluator already gated for quality.
• Ask-for-changes is cheap. You don't have to re-write an email. Say "more casual, shorter, drop the last paragraph" and the Sales specialist redrafts.
• Reject without guilt. If a draft is off-brand, reject. The CEO learns from rejections faster than from nitpicks.

When to type instead

The Boardroom always has a text box. Use it when cards can't express what you want:

• Starting a new task the CEO hasn't proposed ("write me a case study from these notes").
• Asking a question ("what's the status of the outreach?").
• Giving background the team should remember ("I'm travelling next week, defer anything big").
• Correcting a misunderstanding ("we're not a consulting firm anymore — we pivoted").

When you type, the CEO responds with either cards (if the reply involves approvals or handoffs) or a short message (if it's purely conversational). You shouldn't need to type more than a couple of times a day on average.

Keyboard shortcuts

• J / K — next / previous card in the Approvals Inbox.
• A — approve the focused card.
• R — reject the focused card.
• / — focus the Boardroom text box.
• G then B — jump to Boardroom.

Why cards matter — the UX principle

Cards come from a specific product belief: your time is the scarce resource, not the AI's. A chat UI optimizes for showing off the AI. A card UI optimizes for moving your business forward. Every card on your screen is an explicit claim that this decision needed you — and the absence of cards is a promise that the team is handling the rest.

We've written the longer version of this argument in What is a specialist agent? and the design rationale sits inside the Approval Inbox glossary entry.

Frequently asked

Why cards, not chat?

Faster decisions, less reading, fewer words between you and the outcome.

Yellow card — what do I do?

Read the ask, click the primary action. Usually under 15 seconds.

Can I still type?

Always. The Boardroom text box is your escape hatch.

What if I miss one?

Cards wait for you in the Approvals Inbox. Batch-clear later.

Can I change my mind?

Most decisions are reversible. Irreversible ones get a warning.

Key takeaways

• Cards are Black Box's primary UI — chat is the escape hatch.
• Five types: status, decision, delivery, brief, connection.
• Colors tell you the state at a glance: grey / gold / yellow / green / red.
• Keyboard shortcuts let you clear an inbox in minutes.

What to do next

• The morning brief — the daily card your CEO sends.
• Next steps — week 1 habits.
• Approval Inbox — the yellow-card home.
• Action Feed — the chronological archive.