This essay was first published on the Zyaku blog .

Imagine a reporter on a bus climbing out of a valley. She has just finished a short piece about a road that washed out. She presses Publish. Somewhere around the next bend, the signal goes.

Now look at her screen and ask a simple question: what does the phone actually know?

It knows she pressed the button. It might know the request left the phone. It does not know whether Zyaku received it. Maybe the post went through a second before the tower dropped. Maybe it never left. From inside the phone, both look the same.

Most apps answer that question with a guess. A spinner that never stops. A tick that appears too early. Or, worst of all, a cheerful "Posted!" that turns out to be wrong much later, when her editor asks where the story is.

This week we shipped a small change to Zyaku that I think about more than most big features.…