Spinner verbs: some Highland and nautical suggestions for the default set

Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 0 comments · opened Aug 1, 2026

The customisable spinner verbs (the spinnerVerbs setting) are a small feature with outsized charm. Proposing a few from our own list for promotion into the default set:

  • Bagpiping
  • Caber-tossing
  • Tartan-weaving
  • Glen-roaming
  • Trudging
  • Rowing
  • Sailing
  • Stravaiging
  • Pole-vaulting

The Highland ones bring some Scottish flavour, and Stravaiging (Scots: wandering aimlessly and happily) may be the single most accurate description of agentic exploration yet coined. Trudging and Rowing are honest about the stretches that are simply work, and Sailing is what it feels like when a long task finally catches the wind.

If only two make it, please let them be Bagpiping and Pole-vaulting.

Bagpiping is the sound of sustained, determined effort that you can hear from a long way off — which is exactly what a long agentic run is like for whoever is waiting on it. And Pole-vaulting is the shape of the work: a long, unglamorous run-up, one committed plant, and then either you clear the bar or you take the whole thing down with you. Nothing else in the default set captures that.

All of these are in daily use here via the spinnerVerbs setting and render nicely in the spinner.

While here: the spinnerVerbs setting itself is still absent from the settings documentation (tracked in #21599); happy to see both land.

View original on GitHub ↗