Building a Real-Time Step Progress UI with Flask + JavaScript

Building a Real-Time Step Progress UI with Flask + JavaScript A Bot creation flow that takes 16 steps — here's how we made the wait feel transparent and fast. Background When you hit "Create Bot" in our home lab dashboard, the backend runs through this sequence: SSH connection check Bot name collision check Home directory creation Template file copy Register in agents.list Telegram Bot binding auth-profiles.json symlink creation OpenClaw config file write Agent config file (openclaw.json) creation Gateway restart Startup verification (log monitoring) Dev directory creation TOOLS.md generation Symlink final verification Gateway restart wait (5 seconds) Completion notification Even when everything succeeds, this takes 30–40 seconds. Just showing a spinner makes it feel frozen. Unexplained waiting time feels roughly 3× longer than it actually is. Design Options There are several standard patterns for real-time progress: 1. Polling Client repeatedly hits GET /api/job-status/{id}. Simple, b