The Contextual Notification Sieve intercepts the noise, distils what can wait into calm digests, and escalates only what genuinely matters — decided by your real-world context, not each app's engagement metric.
Notifications rarely overwhelm all at once. They accumulate quietly — a promo here, an app ping there, a cryptic airline alert or a one-line fraud notice buried between two marketing blasts. By the time the genuinely urgent thing arrives, attention is already spent, and the important note gets missed.
One promo is easy to ignore. Eighty notifications across a working afternoon is not.
Every app decides for itself when to interrupt you. Promos, social pings, and the one alert that actually mattered all arrive the same way, at full volume, all day — each app optimising for its engagement, not your attention.
Sieve doesn't hide notifications. It changes who decides when they reach you.
No decorative palette. Every hue names a state in the sieve, so priority is legible before a word is read. Built on IBM Carbon values, verified to WCAG AA in both themes.
IBM Plex Sans carries the interface; IBM Plex Mono carries the metadata, so numbers read as instruments and never compete with the message.
The atoms the whole app is built from — the real, token-driven build, shown in both themes at once.
Source glyph, a vertical priority line that colour-codes the verdict, the payload, and mono metadata pinned right. The whole inbox is this one row, repeated. A blocked item is present but dimmed — silenced, never deleted.
Borderless, low-saturation fills with high-contrast text keep it from reading like a spreadsheet. One --sv-pad token flips Comfortable (14px) to Compact (8px).
All fourteen screens the prototype runs, each built from the components above and shown in both themes. Change the theme and the same markup re-reads its tokens.
Opens on a sentence, not a backlog — the single thing that crossed the bar, above a strip that frames what was held as focus gained.
Your 16:05 flight is delayed 45 min. You'd reach the gate too late to board.
Your 16:05 flight is delayed 45 min. You'd reach the gate too late to board.
The signature move: a cryptic ping becomes one decision, a fact grid, prepared actions, and the reasoning — on one screen.
Your 16:05 flight is delayed 45 min. After landing you'd reach the LAX gate about 15 minutes too late to board.
Your 16:05 flight is delayed 45 min. After landing you'd reach the LAX gate about 15 minutes too late to board.
The same pattern proven where the stakes are highest. Location contradicts the phone; the card freezes in one tap.
A $420 charge in Jakarta was declined. You're in San Francisco. Nothing has left your account.
A $420 charge in Jakarta was declined. You're in San Francisco. Nothing has left your account.
The third archetype, handled without alarm. A pattern worth a call, stated calmly and once.
Two readings, four hours apart. Not an emergency, and not something to sit on either.
Two readings, four hours apart. Not an emergency, and not something to sit on either.
How reachable you are is a dial, not an on/off switch — a range the whole funnel reads.
Closing the loop with one calm read. The day's held items, synthesised, on your terms.
A quiet record — accountability, not a scoreboard. What was held, surfaced, and acted on.
Every rule is visible and correctable. The model is a first-class screen, never a black box.
Rules you can see and correct — never a black box.
Rules you can see and correct — never a black box.
The other half of trust: a few things, up front, so Sieve isn't guessing from zero.
The other half of trust: tell me what matters before I guess.
The other half of trust: tell me what matters before I guess.
Onboarding that tells the truth about access — it earns each permission and explains why.
Before Sieve has learned anything, it says so, asks before silencing, and shows its work.
For the first few days I'll ask before I silence anything important, and I'll show my work every time. You correct me; I learn fast.
For the first few days I'll ask before I silence anything important, and I'll show my work every time. You correct me; I learn fast.
The ambiguous middle, shown from both directions, so you can teach the edges.
Shown from both directions, so you can teach the edges.
Shown from both directions, so you can teach the edges.
What intercept feels like at the boundary: one thing on the lock screen, everything else waiting.
Most of the time, Sieve is the absence of a buzz — the calm you don't notice.
The Now screen opens on quiet, not a backlog. Held volume is stated as focus gained, never an unread count that guilts you into the app.
“Flight Update: UA2419” becomes “You'll miss your connection by ~15 min.” One decision, the facts behind it, and the actions.
Not an on/off mute. A range you set — from only-critical to everything — that the whole funnel reads. Control is visible, not buried.
Every escalation carries a why; every learned rule is visible and correctable. On day one it admits it knows nothing, and earns access rather than assuming it.
The prototype runs the whole loop — every screen above is live and operable, on a real device frame, in both themes.
Run the whole flow yourself — intercept, distil, escalate, and back — in light and dark, on a real device frame.