We’re currently rebuilding our onboarding experience and are thinking through the UX when project setup depends on long-running agent calls.

What’s the best user experience in that situation?

Should users be blocked from the dashboard and see a loading screen until everything is ready (with a notification once setup is complete)? Or is it better to show a more transparent, step-by-step “chain-of-thought” style progress view while the agents are running?

How did you approach onboarding UX in this case, and what has worked well for you?