Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. Generally, a user equipment (UE) may sense and report resource availability using a reporting pattern to manage a payload size of a reporting message. A sensing pattern may indicate a pattern of resources of a sidelink channel that is being reported in the reporting message (e.g., and one or more sidelink channel resources not being reported), and a resolution of resource availability statuses reported for a first subset of resources of a sidelink channel. A base station or another UE may indicate which reporting pattern (e.g., from a set of configured patterns) that a UE is to use for sensing and generating the sensing report. The UE may autonomously select the reporting pattern, and may transmit an indication of the pattern to the receiving UE.