Thinking Orbs

Thinking Orbs is a React component library of animated orbs providing status indicators for AI applications.

Thinking Orbs is a React component library that provides well-crafted, animated orbs to serve as status indicators for artificial intelligence interfaces. It is designed for developers building React applications who need visual representations of states like working, reasoning, searching, compacting, and retrying. The library has no external dependencies and has a small footprint of 3.8 KB gzipped. Developers can install the package from npm or copy the component directly into their projects using shadcn. The core ships with one shape and one render, while other shapes and drawing methods are opt-in to keep bundle sizes minimal. The project is open source under the MIT license.

Thinking Orbs at a glance

Best for: Software engineer, Designer
Runs on: Web, open source
Pricing: Free
Released: October 2026
Category: AI coding tool
Website: thinkingorbs.com

Key features

Animated AI status indicators
No external dependencies
Small bundle size of 3.8 KB gzipped
Installation via npm
Component integration with shadcn
Opt-in shapes and renders
Interactive online playground

Use it for

Displaying AI thinking or reasoning states
Indicating search progress in interfaces
Showing background task execution
Representing compacting and retrying statuses

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