One search box, place-first. The Explore lobby leads with Communities near you (circles + channels), then people & posts — a cross-entity front door, while the Channels/Circles tabs stay the deep homes. The wedge X & Reddit can't copy: trending on your street.
Never blank. Honest location pill governs scope. Topics filter row leads, then Happening near you (posts), then Trending communities (Circles|Channels toggle), then People. Content-first ordering.
User hasn't set a place yet. Scope pill reads "Across India". A dismissible "Set your area" banner near the top links to My Gaon onboarding. Discovery rails are nationally scoped.
Recent searches moved OFF the lobby (with 10 they wasted half the screen). Tapping the box opens this focused state — recent searches when empty, live suggestions as you type. Cancel returns to the lobby.
One box across all types. Top groups People · Circles · Channels · Posts (2-3 each). Distinct verbs (Follow / Join / View) + avatar shape teach the entity type without reading. Near-you boosted, tagged honestly.
Same query, Channels filter. Channels show their local spine (📍 place + "broadcast" + members) and a View verb — visibly different from a circle's "popular in Bihar · Join".
Slide Village → India. Segmented by type: Circles · Channels · People · Posts (all enabled; Posts is default active). Honest scope label degrades visibly — never fakes "near you".
Tapping any 📍 pill opens the ladder with State pre-selected — the narrowest scope that isn't empty on day one. Narrowing to district/village is opt-in; widening to India is one tap.
Where should results come from? Defaults to your state.
While results fetch, shimmer skeletons hold the space. Same chrome (typed field + Top tab + scope bar) so the screen never feels dead. Shape matches the real row so the transition is seamless.
Village scope returns nothing. The empty state names the gap honestly ("No matches in Bheldi"), then offers a clear escape: widen scope. Two buttons = widen to state, widen to India. Never a dead screen.
Nothing here yet at village level — try a wider area to find what you're looking for.
Connection failed. Warn-tinted icon, honest headline, and a single "Retry" action. Same chrome stays up so the user knows what they were searching. No misleading empty state — tells the truth.
Check your connection and try again. Your query is saved — just tap Retry.
A cross-entity front door that leads with communities, place-first, crisp like X — while the Channels/Circles tabs stay the deep homes.
Hard dependency: near-around-by-default needs user location (primaryLocation sync), which is currently thin — the scope ladder prevents empty screens, but turning sync on is the real critical path. v1 caps at 4 entity types (channels · circles · people · posts); topics/civic/places are P3. Built on the Channels/Circles mockup tokens. Note: all "precise near you" modules (trending near you, people near you, happening near you) are flag-gated and degrade gracefully to State-level counts when per-user location is thin — the scope default of Bihar ensures the screen is never empty on day one.