Async destroyed visibility. What replaces it.

The morning standup worked because everyone was in the same room. Presence was free. Tone was free. The unspoken "I'm stuck but I don't want to say it" was visible to anyone paying attention.

Async breaks all of that. The text version of a standup is a written report. Written reports flatten tone. They don't broadcast unease. They don't surface the thing the person hasn't figured out how to phrase yet.

The replacement isn't a better standup. It's a continuous low-resolution presence signal that runs all day. Who's on. Who's heads-down. Who's on a wall. The standup becomes the daily punctuation, not the daily report.