# The progress of progress bars

> Source: <https://blog.omgmog.net/post/progress-of-progress-bars/>
> Published: 2026-07-10 23:00:00+00:00

I was waiting for Claude to answer a token-heavy question at work the other day, the little “Thinking…” label flickering into “Wibbling…” and then “Moseying…”, and I caught myself doing the thing I always do when a spinner takes too long, staring at it, trying to divine meaning from the word choice. Is it nearly done? There’s no percentage, no bar, just a word standing in for “trust me, something is happening.” It sent me down a rabbit hole into where progress bars came from, and it turns out they were never really about progress at all.