Identifiers: Iconography

Whether an agentic feature needs its own identity glyph, and why that glyph must not also mean ‘generating’ or ‘uncertain.’

What it governs

Whether an AI feature uses a dedicated glyph to identify itself as AI — separate from any glyph used to show it is generating, or any glyph used to flag uncertainty. It governs only the identity glyph: the one that answers “is this AI,” not the ones that answer “is it working” or “should I trust this.”

It does not govern Foundations: Iconography itself — the closed 154-icon set, the four size tokens, and the color pairings every icon in the product already draws from, including any identity glyph this page eventually adopts.

Vocabulary

Three glyphs get confused for one because they can all sit in the same corner of the same card. This page owns exactly one of them.

Term	Answers	Owned by
Identity glyph	”Is this AI?”	This page
State glyph	”Is it working right now?” — a spinner, a generating indicator	Governors
Confidence glyph	”Should I trust this?” — a caveat or warning mark	Trust builders

Choosing a value

If you need to…	Use	Not this, because
Mark a surface as AI-made with a small, consistent icon	An icon from Titan’s existing 154-icon set that fits, or a formal proposal to add one	An inline SVG or an ad hoc mark outside the closed set — Iconography’s closed-set rule already forbids this for every other icon in the product
Show the AI is actively generating	An outcome-state treatment on the relevant pattern page, per Governors	Reusing the identity glyph to also mean “in progress.” One glyph now carries two meanings, which Iconography’s one-meaning-per-icon rule already prohibits for every other icon
Flag that an answer is uncertain	The Trust builders Caveat pattern	Overloading the identity glyph for this too — the same one-meaning problem, with higher stakes, since a user who can’t tell “AI” from “AI, and I’m not sure” is the confident-and-wrong case the whole section exists to prevent
Render AI output before any glyph has been decided	A text label only	A placeholder icon — an icon reads as a decision the moment it renders, even an unofficial one

Reference

Nothing is decided or shipped. No identity glyph exists for any Invoca agentic feature today. This section will be generated from a real decision once one exists.

Relationships

An identity glyph, if adopted, comes from Foundations: Iconography’s closed set — or from a formal proposal to extend it, exactly like any other icon in the product. It also inherits that page’s color rules: an identity glyph is colored with an icon-* token, never a hex value or a text-color token, and if it carries a status-adjacent meaning it uses the -alt variant.

It pairs with Identifiers: Color — if a color treatment is decided, the glyph and the treatment are the icon-plus-color pairing Color’s own constraint requires everywhere else — and with Identifiers: Avatar, since a small identity glyph is one of the plausible shapes an AI mark could take.

Accessibility

• An icon-only identity mark has an accessible name stating what it is — “AI-generated,” not a description of the glyph — the same requirement Iconography’s accessible-name rule places on every icon-only control.
• A decorative use of the glyph (appearing beside text that already discloses AI content) is hidden from assistive technology with aria-hidden="true", per Iconography’s decorative-icon rule.
• The glyph is never the sole carrier of the AI disclosure. Pair it with text, per Iconography’s icon-plus-text rule and the overview’s disclosure requirement.

Constraints

ID	Constraint	Rationale
TITAN-AIICO-01	An identity glyph, if used, comes from Titan’s existing 154-icon set or a formal proposal to it — never an inline SVG or an ad hoc mark.	Mirrors Iconography’s closed-set rule. An icon outside the closed set has no size token, no color token, and no contrast guarantee.
TITAN-AIICO-02	An identity glyph carries exactly one meaning — “this is AI” — and is never reused to also mean “generating” or “uncertain.”	Mirrors Iconography’s one-meaning-per-icon rule. Those are separate glyphs owned by Governors and Trust builders respectively; reusing one glyph for two meanings makes both unreadable.
TITAN-AIICO-03	An identity glyph is never the sole signal that content is AI-generated. Pair with text — the feature’s stated name.	Matches Iconography’s icon-plus-text rule and the overview’s disclosure requirement — icon comprehension without a label is low, and worst for the users who need the disclosure most.
TITAN-AIICO-04	An icon-only identity mark carries an accessible name stating what it is, not what it looks like.	Mirrors Iconography’s accessible-name rule — a screen reader user needs the fact, not a shape description.
TITAN-AIICO-05	Where no identity glyph has been decided, AI-touched surfaces render with a text label only, never a placeholder icon.	An icon reads as a decision the instant it renders, even when nobody intended it as one.

Divergences

Not applicable. Nothing is shipped yet to diverge from.

Gaps

• Whether a glyph vocabulary is needed at all, given that Name and Color together might disclose AI content sufficiently on their own, is undecided.
• Whether one identity glyph serves all of Invoca’s agentic surfaces or each needs its own is the same per-feature-or-once question flagged on the overview.

Related

Identifiers: Avatar · Identifiers: Color · Identifiers: Name · Identifiers: Personality · AI Experience overview · Foundations: Iconography

Why it works this way

Icons are learned, not read — Iconography’s one-meaning-per-icon rule exists because a glyph that means two different things on two different screens has to be relearned every time, which means it is carrying no information at all. That problem gets worse, not better, under an identity glyph, because the three candidate meanings — is this AI, is it working, should I trust it — are exactly the three questions a confused user is most likely to be asking at the same moment. Splitting them into three glyphs owned by three different categories is what keeps any one of them answerable at a glance.

Status

No visual identity has been decided for any Invoca agentic feature yet. This page proposes a framework for making that decision — it is not the decision itself. See Coverage, stated honestly.