Glim exists because many AI UIs need presence. That does not mean every screen should grow a creature. Shipping charm into the wrong context feels like clip art on an invoice.
Skip a companion when…
- Latency is under ~300ms regularly — status chrome becomes noise.
- The surface is dense and expert (trading, surgery, on-call) and motion competes with alarms.
- You cannot bind to real states — a randomly animating pet is worse than nothing.
- Legal/compliance UI requires austere, documentary presentation.
- Users already drowned in toasts — fix information architecture first.
Better alternatives in those cases
- Plain inline status text with a Stop action
- Deterministic progress for truly measurable jobs
- Skeleton only for known layout fetches
- Quiet streaming with a minimal caret
A simple decision test
If removing the companion makes the AI turn clearer, keep it. If removing it makes the page calmer without harming understanding, delete it.
If you do use Glim
Stay in the ambient layer. One instance. Real states. Reduced-motion path. Free creatures first. Measure cancel/re-prompt rates before expanding to a full cast.
Try the product honestly at getglim.dev — and walk away if your UX test says status text is enough.
Try Glim free. Offline starter + MIT creatures. No fake checkout.