Unread sits on white with a 3px flame rail; read recedes to the sunken tint. The inversion does the work — an unread row is the one that looks like a card, and a read one sinks into the page — so the rail only has to confirm it. The kind pill sits between the message and the timestamp, so the eye passes it on the way to the time. Weakness: with most threads read, the list reads as mostly grey, which suits an inbox you are working through but looks heavier than a flat white list.

The classification becomes a column, not a pill. Fixed-width Type / Conversation / Time headers, so kinds align down the list and you can scan for every Estimate at once — the pill can't do that because it floats after variable-length text. Name and message share line one, meta drops beneath. Unread is weight alone: bold name, ink message, no tint or rail. Weakness: 170px of every row is spent on a repeating label, and losing the pill's plate makes the kind quieter than the reference intends.

The kind becomes a section, so no row repeats it. Each heading carries its glyph and count in the Contacted tab's eyebrow style, which frees the row for what varies — who, where, what they said. A leading 8px dot handles unread. Weakness: recency breaks across sections, so the newest message is no longer simply the top row; and with one Estimate the heading costs more height than it saves.