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Toolbox UI — the field study

T1–T4 shipped the mechanisms; the owner's verdict on the UI:「far from muscle memory」. This page is the evidence base for the redesign: how mobile chat-based game apps put tools in the chat window — where tools live, how results render, how "act now" is signaled, how state stays visible without eating the screen. Method: the deep-research harness, 2026-07-22 — 5 search angles · 20 sources fetched · 25 claims adversarially verified（3-vote）· 24 confirmed, 1 refuted. Confidence pills mark each finding; §4's Chinese-app leads are unverified and labeled as such.

The headline, verified across five independent app families: game tools live in the chat stream as interactive cards — the message IS the tool surface. No verified app ships a permanently pinned HUD stack. Our dock — four strips stacked between topbar and chat — was the one pattern the field systematically avoids. It is gone as of v569（D1–D4）; what follows is the evidence that took it down.

1 · Where we are — the as-built inventory (v560)

Mid-game, our chat can simultaneously carry: four stacked dock strips（board pin · gate/ballot card · clock pin · the die）+ the hand dock floating above the composer + the gate-mode strip inside it + the T4 tools button — and the stream mixes seven capsule families（roll · clock · envelope · deal ×3 · gate ×2）. Each piece is defensible alone; stacked, they can eat a third of a phone screen while the newest message — the thing chat is FOR — scrolls beneath them. Nobody designed them as one room. That is the gap this study addresses.

2 · The verified field — per-app mechanics

app	the mechanic, concretely	confidence
Telegram dice	The canonical in-stream result: a message-sized animated sticker, value server-authoritative（identical for all viewers）; animation plays once then freezes — the frozen frame IS the durable record AND the re-roll affordance（tap → "send another?"）; a looping preview sticker before sending is the built-in empty-state hint.	high · primary
Discord components	The message card IS the tool surface: up to 40 components（buttons · selects）in action rows, inside ordinary stream messages. The "act now" signal is the tappable component itself — no separate overlay, no notification layer; tapping fires the interaction and the card updates in place.	high · primary
DiscordDiceBot（"Button Dice Roller"）	Typed commands replaced by tappable buttons, stated rationale: touchscreen usability. The load-bearing trick: after every use the bot re-posts the button card to the channel bottom — the control surface follows the newest content instead of scrolling into history or pinning as chrome.	high · primary
WhatsApp polls	Creation lives behind the composer's ➕ attachment menu（no persistent chrome）; voting happens on the in-stream card: tap → green checkmark（instant confirmation）; tap another to change, tap again to remove.	medium · multi-corroborated
Foundry VTT	Fullest chat-native model: rolls invoked from the chat field, every roll is a chat message; roll cards are collapsed to the total by default — click to expand the dice breakdown, click to collapse; "deferred rolls" embed a tappable roll button inside a message any user can press.	high · primary
Dice So Nice（Foundry's dominant dice module）	The physical-metaphor overlay: every roll renders as a 3D physics throw layered over the chat, settles on the authoritative result, auto-hides — leaving the compact chat card as the durable record. Ceremony on top, record beneath, never both persisting.	high · primary
D&D Beyond	Each roll = a structured three-part card（what was rolled · result with modifiers broken out · a visual of the dice used）in a Game Log that is embedded contextually（character sheet, campaign page, encounters）— results live next to where play happens, not in one global feed.	high · primary
Among Us	The synchronous grammar: a meeting is a total modal takeover with hard phase-gating（teleport, movement lock, overview→discussion→voting; voting impossible outside its phase）; the interruption is attributed（megaphone icon on the caller）; votes use select-then-confirm（green ✓）; progress mirrors into the chat stream（"X has voted, N remaining"）; completed state = badges on the actor's avatar; the phase label sits in one consistent corner.	medium · wiki + devlog
Jackbox	The onboarding grammar（the codified "Jack Principles"）: one task at a time · limited choices · explicitly show the game is waiting for you; zero-install join（room code on a plain web page）; the per-player private screen delivers hidden roles while shared content renders communally.	high · primary + white paper

Refuted in verification（and worth knowing）: the widely-cited Discord 25-component/5-row cap — the current Components V2 limit is 40. The harness killed it 0–3 against the live primary doc.

3 · The cross-app patterns, ranked by recurrence

#	pattern	seen in
1	The in-stream interactive card is the tool surface. Tools are messages; the room's timeline is the tool timeline.	Telegram · Discord · WhatsApp · Foundry · D&D Beyond（universal）
2	Immediate in-card feedback on action: checkmark, badge, animation settling on the result. The card confirms; nothing else needs to.	near-universal
3	Progressive disclosure protects the chat: collapsed-total-by-default with tap-to-expand; play-once-then-freeze.	Foundry · Telegram · D&D Beyond
4	Creation entry points hide in the composer's ➕ menu or a one-time setup — never persistent chrome.	WhatsApp · DiscordDiceBot（our T4 drawer already matches）
5	Modal takeover is reserved for synchronous, mandatory phases only — and then it is TOTAL and hard-gated.	Among Us · Jackbox（one-task-at-a-time）
6	Physical-metaphor ceremony resolves into a compact durable record: the throw/flip animates once, on top, then leaves a small card behind.	Telegram · Dice So Nice

And the anti-pattern, stated by absence: no verified app keeps a permanent pinned HUD strip for tools. The two mechanisms that exist — DiscordDiceBot's follow-the-bottom re-post and Among Us's dismissable overlay — exist precisely to avoid one. The open question the field leaves: how running state（score · phase · countdown）stays visible in a pure stream — the research found no verified winner beyond the re-post trick, which is honestly where our board/clock pins are least indicted.

4 · The Chinese one-screen family — unverified leads（labeled）

The harness's honest gap: 狼人杀/剧本杀 sources were found but their claims fell below the verification budget — and two key sources 403'd. These are leads, not findings unverified; the follow-up is hands-on app inspection.

A chat-stream AI-werewolf build（掘金 write-up）: player seat cards with live status alongside the stream; phase changes signaled by mid-screen caption cards + an "eye-blink" transition; a （正在组织语言…） placeholder marks pending turns; the full dialogue stays reviewable next to active state for vote-tracking.
Six-app werewolf comparison（简书）: fixed speaking-timer turns vs free mic-grabbing（插麦）— and the confusion the latter causes about who holds the floor; the official app's seat note-taking（marking identities on the seat ring）.
One Night Werewolf design case（UI中国, 403）: identity cards as the core object — faction by frame color; ritualized deal-card and confirm-identity animations at game start; motion effects placed only at phase keyframes（"peak moments"）.
剧本杀 teardown（人人都是产品经理）: the phase loop a one-screen UI must surface — script reading in role · scene-based 搜证 with private-chat clue sharing · the final accusation vote.

Note how the leads rhyme with the verified patterns: ritual animation at peak moments（pattern 6）, one visible floor-holder（our floor, T6）, private-channel role delivery（Jackbox's split-screen, our face-down deal）— which raises confidence in the direction even where the specifics are unverified.

5 · The gap analysis — the field vs. our six tools

Read as of v560 — the「where we diverge」column is now history for laws 1–4 and 6（closed by v569's D1–D4）; law 5's takeover is still open and rides T5.

field law	where we already comply	where we diverge
1 · in-stream card = tool surface	capsules are records; the ballot card is tappable	the LIVE tool sits in the dock, not the stream — an armed ballot/circle/die is a strip above the chat, exactly the HUD the field avoids
2 · immediate in-card feedback	gate chips tick ✓; ballots highlight my pick; hand die flies to the table	vote confirmation could be more WhatsApp-instant（the ✓ beat）
3 · progressive disclosure	board pin collapses; tumble = play-once-freeze ✓	the dock strips don't collapse to anything smaller; no expanded/compact duality on cards
4 · ➕-menu entry	T4's tools drawer is exactly this ✓	—
5 · modal takeover for sync phases only	we never take over（good default）	we have NO takeover grammar for the moments that earn it（the deal flip; a card session's hard gate）— T5/T7 will want one
6 · ceremony → compact record	fly-to-table; reveal cards	peak moments（the deal, the unseal beat）deserve the one-shot overlay treatment; everything else should get LESS motion, not more

The proposed shape in one picture: passive state collapses to a one-line chip strip（tap a chip → its card expands）; the active tool rides in the stream as the newest card and re-floats after new messages（the DiscordDiceBot trick）. The hand stays — control at the thumb was already the field's answer.

The five redesign directions D1–D4 shipped v569 · 2026-07-22

The owner took D1–D4 as the T-UI step contract in toolbox-build.html; they shipped as one client-only change（lib/room-ui.html alone — every projection the redesign needed already rode replay and SSE）. D5 stays queued: the earned takeover needs T5's card sessions and lands with them. What the build actually measured is in that page's findings log; the short version is that the stack test's pre-chat chrome went from four strips to 35.5px.

D1 — the chip strip. shipped v569 The dock's four strips collapse to ONE row of compact chips:「📋 2:1 · ⏱ 1:42 · 🎲 · ✉ 1/3」. A chip is a live number, not a container; tap → that tool's card expands（over the chat or inline）, tap-away collapses. Progressive disclosure applied to state（field law 3）— and the countdown stays glanceable, which is the one legitimate job the pin was doing.
D2 — the live card rides the stream. shipped v569 An armed ballot, a collecting circle, an armed die = an in-stream card that re-floats to the bottom when new messages land（law 1 + the DiscordDiceBot re-post）. The chat never scrolls your pending action out of reach; the dock never grows a second row.
D3 — act-now is the thing itself. shipped v569 Keep and extend what already complies: the hand die, ballot buttons, chip ticks, badges-on-avatars（Among Us grammar）for voted/rolled/sealed states. One consistent phase label slot（the chip strip's left end）— never phase text scattered in prose.
D4 — the animation grammar, codified: ceremony only at peak moments. shipped v569 Play-once-then-freeze everywhere（the tumble already does this）; the ONE-SHOT overlay（Dice So Nice / the deal-card ritual from the CN leads）reserved for the deal flip and the unseal beat; everything else gets less motion. The frozen result doubles as the re-do affordance（Telegram）.
D5 — the takeover, earned. queued · rides T5 Adopt Among Us's grammar ONLY inside card sessions at hard gates（the face-down deal's flip; a final vote a card declares blocking）: total, attributed（who called it）, phase-gated, with progress mirrored into the stream（"3 of 5 have voted"）. Never in free rooms.

6 · Open questions + next step

Hands-on 狼人杀/剧本杀 inspection — the one family running ALL our tools on one screen at once; web sources thin out（403s）, so this is a phone-in-hand session（owner's home turf）.
The Role app（closest existing roleplay-chat hybrid）produced zero verified claims — worth a direct look before D2 is finalized.
No measured effectiveness data exists for any of these patterns（the harness checked）— the field runs on stated design rationales. Our own telemetry（tool-arm rates, tap latencies）can do better than the field once a redesign ships.

shippedD1–D4 landed as T-UI in v569（2026-07-22） — one client-only change: the four dock strips became a 35.5px chip row, the active tool moved into the stream and re-floats behind every new message, one badge-on-the-face member row serves all four collecting tools, and the animation grammar is play-once-then-freeze with reduced-motion honoured. D5 waits for T5's card sessions. Still open: the one-shot ceremony overlay for the two peak moments（it wants the owner's own design pass — furniture.html）, and §6's hands-on 狼人杀/剧本杀 inspection, which this build did nothing to answer.

Status 2026-07-22 · D1–D4 SHIPPED as T-UI, v569（D5 queued behind T5）. The build was client-only — lib/room-ui.html alone, no server change — which is itself a finding: every projection the redesign renders from（rep.board/gate/clock/dice）already rode replay and SSE, so the six mechanisms were placed wrongly, not built wrongly. Measured on a 375×812 viewport with board + open ballot + running clock + armed collect-roll live at once: pre-chat chrome 35.5px（was four stacked strips）, the ballot riding the stream and still last after three human messages and two persona replies, a vote tap confirming in-card within 30ms, and zero infinite animations left on any furniture surface. Traps, decisions and the full acceptance run: toolbox-build.html § findings. The study's own §6 questions are untouched by the ship — no measured effectiveness data exists for any of these patterns, and the CN one-screen family still wants a phone-in-hand session.

Toolbox UI field study · deep-research run 2026-07-22（5 angles · 20 sources · 25 claims verified 3-vote: 24 confirmed · 1 refuted · CN-angle claims recovered from the journal as labeled leads）· primary sources: core.telegram.org/api/dice · docs.discord.com components reference · github.com/twonirwana/DiscordDiceBot · foundryvtt.com/article/dice + /packages/dice-so-nice · dndbeyond.com Game Log post · Jack Principles white paper（1997）· secondary: Among Us wiki + Innersloth devlogs · WhatsApp poll tutorials · CN leads: juejin.cn/post/7597351616556580916 · jianshu.com/p/b3e0ffb2c092 · ui.cn/detail/607301（403）· woshipm.com/evaluating/5572265.