> but I would not call it polished
The hiring manager above thought it was too polished, but you think it is not polished enough.
> There’s no drafts. No CC or BCC field. No folders or labels (including sent or trash!). No replies. No threads. No shortcuts. There’s not even an indication of whether an email has been read or not. In terms of features it is very very very barebones
None of these were asked for. Your guess as to what the true requirements are completely different from the authors, and others in this comment section.
Everyone seems to have different opinions on why the author failed. No one should have their time wasted on a take home test destined to be rejected because they guessed wrong.
And in this case, the author explicitly asked if they were on the right track before spending time on the test. Kagi had the opportunity to reject early or nudge the author back in the expected direction. Instead they wasted everyone's time.
I don't see how this can be interpreted in a positive way.