Empty State Design

Every product starts empty, and many surfaces spend much of their life sparse. Two failures dominate: blank ("No items." and nothing else) and stuffed (a giant illustration, tips, fake stats, a banner, a quote).

Start here

1. Read references/_shared/experience-core.md.
2. Read references/_shared/experience-operating-contract.md; classify significant sparse-state work, render real states when possible, and report skipped evidence explicitly.
3. Identify which kind of empty this is (references/empty-state-types.md) before designing anything.

Core rules in brief. These apply even before you open references/_shared/experience-core.md. Read that file (the full rules and evidence levels) before a full review, repair, or build.