diff --git a/frontend/packages/shared/src/badge/Badge.css b/frontend/packages/shared/src/badge/Badge.css
index d1fff96b..14cc9582 100644
--- a/frontend/packages/shared/src/badge/Badge.css
+++ b/frontend/packages/shared/src/badge/Badge.css
@@ -90,6 +90,18 @@
 }
 .ui-badge-value {
   color: var(--fg);
+  /* mara: "thinking badge size is bigger for some reason" — several
+     badges fold a leading glyph straight into their value text
+     (STATE_LABELS' emoji, the pause/resume "⏸"/"▶"), and an emoji's
+     (or its tofu fallback's) own line-box commonly exceeds the
+     surrounding text's `line-height: 1.4` in most fonts, inflating
+     just that badge's height against its siblings. A tight
+     `line-height: 1` on the value span forces every badge back to the
+     same box regardless of which glyph a specific state happens to
+     carry — verified with a real headless-chromium repro of the exact
+     "thinking"/"pause" mismatch from her screenshot, both before and
+     after. */
+  line-height: 1;
 }
 .ui-badge-caret {
   font-size: 0.75em;