Ephemera · interface decay
UI should expire.
Generated interfaces carry a provenance — they were built at a moment, from data that was current then. As that moment recedes, the interface should say so. Not with a timestamp. With its body.
Where decay earns its place
Socialfeeds
Engineered timelessness. The platform hides when content was made to sustain the scroll. Decay makes that invisible manipulation visible.
Try the demo →Notificationinbox
130 unread. The oldest from 3 months ago looks identical to the newest. Decay surfaces what's been silently waiting.
no demo yetAI-generatedanswers
Generated from a query 8 months ago. The world moved on; the interface didn't. The right signal is visual, not a timestamp nobody reads.
no demo yetTaskbacklog
Tickets from last quarter sit next to today's priorities, indistinguishable. Decay turns ignored work into a felt weight.
See lead cards →Ephemerallinks
A Notion invite, a Figma share, a demo link — some expired years ago. The URL still resolves; the context is long gone.
no demo yetNewsrecirculation
A 2021 article reshared with full editorial weight in 2025. Decay would make the original publish date impossible to ignore.
no demo yetSee it in action
The decay demo
A mock social feed with real decay applied per post. Each post has a genuine timestamp. Drag the timeline slider to age the feed — or hit Live to watch effects accumulate in real time. Text peels character by character, images warp and channel-split, structural cracks propagate from edges.
Decay holds at usability floor · saturation untouched · cracks animate in