Skeleton
A placeholder version of a screen that renders the layout’s shapes — bars for text, blocks for images — while the real content loads.
Example usage
“Show a skeleton for the feed; a spinner says wait, a skeleton says almost.”
Editor’s note
A skeleton is a promise about geometry: it must match the loaded layout or the page will jolt at the worst possible moment, the moment of arrival. Two rules of honesty. Never skeleton what may not come — an empty state is not a loading state. And never let one linger: past a couple of seconds the promise reads as a stall, and a stall deserves words, not bones.