Showing intermediate steps

Progress is a feature

A multi-step agent can work for thirty seconds. Showing which tool is running turns dead time into visible progress and gives the user a reason to trust the eventual answer.

Summarise rather than dump. A line saying which source is being searched is informative; a raw JSON payload is noise that also leaks the shape of your internals.

Keep the steps visible after completion, collapsed. Users who want to check the reasoning can expand it, and everyone else sees a clean answer.