Workflows

Three named scenarios. Each carries the same card shape: setup, reading routine, failure mode, anti-pattern contrast, and what to expect under stress. These are not prescriptions. They are configurations worth having lived with for a few sessions, because each teaches a different piece of how Base wants to be read.

A short cross-cutting habits block sits at the end of the page.

Scenario 1 — Differentiated three-slot stack

This is the configuration Base was designed around. Three slots doing genuinely different work on three timeframes. When this configuration works, the alignment alert carries real weight. When it does not, something meaningful has changed in the stack.

Setup

• Slot 01: TimeFrame: 5, K Length: 9, K Smoothing: 3 SMA, D Length: 3 SMA, Source: close, Weight: 33.3.

• Slot 02: TimeFrame: 15, K Length: 14, K Smoothing: 3 SMA, D Length: 3 SMA, Source: close, Weight: 33.3.

• Slot 03: TimeFrame: 60, K Length: 21, K Smoothing: 5 SMA, D Length: 5 SMA, Source: hlc3, Weight: 33.3.

• Master smoothing: off.

• On Bar Close?: on.

The three slots share almost nothing. Slot 01 is a fast intra-day read on closing prices. Slot 02 is the textbook baseline on closing prices. Slot 03 is a calmer higher-timeframe read on hlc3, smoothed harder on both passes. That differentiation is the point.

Reading routine

1. Scan the three slot colors. Full-tone or faded on each? This tells you what each slot just decided.

2. Scan the three slot values. Where does each sit inside its own lookback window?

3. Read the blend. Lime or red? Near 50 (contested) or pulling toward a direction (agreement)?

4. Check whether the three colors agree. If they do, the alignment is across three genuinely different measurements — a more interesting state than if the slots shared configuration.

5. If the blend is near 50 and the slot colors disagree, that is a conflict read. Three different measurements are actively disagreeing with each other.

Failure mode

The most common failure is a reader relaxing the differentiation over time. You start with the configuration above and, during a month of use, you "simplify" — maybe set all three K lengths to 14 for consistency, maybe revert slot 03's source to close, maybe tune the smoothing pairs to match. By the end of the month, the stack has drifted back to three timeframe-varying slots with near-identical configuration. The alignment alert starts firing more often. You interpret that as the tool "working better." It is not. The alert has become a trend-persistence detector with three votes that are no longer independent.

Anti-pattern contrast

Contrast with three slots at TimeFrame: 5/15/60, K Length: 14, K Smoothing: 3 SMA, D Length: 3 SMA, Source: close, equal weights. That is one measurement sampled at three cadences. Alignment on that configuration means the trend is persistent across three cadences, which on a trending instrument is a statement about the trend rather than a three-way vote.

Expected behavior under stress

On a hard trending session, the differentiated stack will show the three slots in sustained agreement — but the agreement is informative because slot 03 on hlc3 with a longer lookback and heavier smoothing is reaching the same K-vs-D state as slot 01 with a short lookback and lighter smoothing. That confluence is real.

On a choppy session, the differentiated stack will show the three slots disagreeing more often than the identical-three-slot configuration would. That disagreement is informative too — it is saying the short, medium, and long lookback windows on your instrument are each seeing something different right now, which is exactly the state a differentiated stack is built to surface.

Scenario 2 — Weight-zero observer with two blend voters

Use slot 03 as a higher-timeframe context display whose alerts you care about but whose weight does not steer the blend. The blend is driven by slots 01 and 02. Slot 03 is information, not influence.

Setup

• Slot 01: TimeFrame: 5, K Length: 14, K Smoothing: 3 SMA, D Length: 3 SMA, Source: close, Weight: 50.

• Slot 02: TimeFrame: 15, K Length: 14, K Smoothing: 3 SMA, D Length: 3 SMA, Source: close, Weight: 50.

• Slot 03: TimeFrame: 60, K Length: 14, K Smoothing: 3 SMA, D Length: 3 SMA, Source: close, Weight: 0, Line Width: 3 to make slot 03 visually prominent.

• Master smoothing: off.

• On Bar Close?: on.

A few small variations of this scenario swap in a differentiated slot 03 — longer K length, heavier smoothing, or hlc3 source — to make slot 03 more informative as context while keeping it excluded from the blend. Either variation teaches the same lesson.

Reading routine

1. Scan slot 01 and slot 02 colors. These two are driving the blend.

2. Look at the blend. It represents the two-slot weighted average, not the three-slot average.

3. Scan slot 03's color as context. If slot 03 is leaning the same direction as slots 01 and 02, the higher-timeframe context agrees with the two-slot blend. If slot 03 is leaning the opposite direction, you are seeing a slot 03–vs–blend disagreement that is worth registering.

4. Remember that slot 03 still counts toward alignment. All Stoch Slots Bullish only fires when all three slots — including the weight-zero observer — are in their bullish state.

Failure mode

The most common failure is forgetting that slot 03 still counts toward alignment. You set up the observer, expect alignment to fire when the two blend voters agree, and then the alignment alert does not fire for long stretches because slot 03 is disagreeing with the blend voters. A reader who does not remember the observer is in the alignment tally will misread this as the alert being broken.

Anti-pattern contrast

Contrast with zeroing slot 03's weight and treating it as "off." The slot still plots, its per-slot alerts still fire, and the slot still counts toward alignment. If the intent is to have slot 03 contribute nothing to any downstream behavior, the right control is Enable Stoch 03 set to false, not Blended Weight set to zero.

Expected behavior under stress

On a fast-moving session, the blend will track slot 01 and slot 02 cleanly, and slot 03 will lag or disagree. That is the observer doing its job — higher-timeframe context is supposed to be slower than the blend voters. The value is in watching the blend move to a state that slot 03 has not yet confirmed, or in watching slot 03 confirm a state the blend is still contested about.

Scenario 3 — Minimal-configuration-first for a first session

Your first session with Base. Goal: do the least work necessary to get a correct read on the pane and to build the habits that will hold up in later sessions. The temptation on a first session is to start tuning before you have read anything — resist it. Tuning without a reading habit installed is just noise.

Setup

• Defaults. All of them. Slot 01 at 5, slot 02 at 15, slot 03 at 60. K Length 14. K and D SMA 3. Source: close. Equal weights at 33.3. Master smoothing off. On Bar Close? = true.

Three liquid instruments on three separate charts is a stronger first session than one instrument watched for three times as long. Each instrument shows the pane in different regimes. Watching a single instrument through a quiet hour teaches you very little about how the pane behaves under pressure.

Reading routine

1. Let the chart warm up. For the default 60m slot with K 14, SMA 3, SMA 3, you need enough loaded 60m history for the stochastic lookback and both smoothing passes. A fresh or thin 1m chart can look populated before the higher-timeframe slot has really settled.

2. Scan colors first. Full tone means K above D. Faded means K below D. Every slot, every bar.

3. Scan values second. Where is each slot sitting inside 0..100?

4. Read the blend. Color from K-vs-D on the blend pair. Value as the weighted headline across the three slots.

5. Notice when you caught yourself reading value-first instead of color-first. That is the reflex this scenario is training against.

6. At the end of each small session segment (say, every 15 minutes of chart time), try to describe the pane state out loud in two sentences: the blend color plus value, and whether the three slots agree or disagree in K-vs-D. If the description comes out fluently, the habit is landing. If you have to work at it, you are still learning.

Two concrete training exercises for the first session

• Pick one slot and watch it flip. Keep your eyes on slot 01 for several chart bars. Wait for it to flip from full tone to faded or vice versa. Note the value at the flip. That was the moment K crossed D on slot 01. Repeat once on slot 02 and once on slot 03. You are training your eye to see K-vs-D as a visible event, not as a number comparison.

• Describe a near-50 blend. Find a bar where the blend is sitting close to 50. Before reading the slot spread, guess whether the three slots are clustered (genuinely quiet) or spread wide (disagreeing). Then check by looking at the slot lines. After a few attempts, you will start predicting the spread accurately from the shape of the surrounding bars.

Failure mode

The most common first-session failure is trying to "tune" the defaults within the first hour, before the reading order has installed. You move K Length to 9 on one slot because 9 is what you are used to, change a smoothing pair on another because you read somewhere that 14, 3, 3 "lags too much," and by the end of the session you have three slots that do not match the shape the pack was designed around and you have not yet learned to read the pane the way it wants to be read. Tuning before reading is the expensive version of this; you pay for it in a longer, more confusing second session.

Anti-pattern contrast

Contrast with enabling master smoothing in the first hour because the blend looked choppy. The pane is supposed to look a little choppy at the minute-to-minute scale — that is the instrument honestly reporting intra-bar movement. Master smoothing hides that at a lag cost. You do not need hiding in the first session. You need the unhidden reading, so you know what the chop looks like before you decide whether you want to see it or not.

Expected behavior under stress

On your first session with the defaults, you will misread the pane at least once. That is normal and it is part of the process; a first session where you never felt confused is a session where you were not pushing yourself to read the pane honestly. The goal of this scenario is not a perfect reading. It is the reading order installed in your hands, so that by the second or third session you are reading color-first without thinking about it, and by the fifth you are noticing slot spread as a separate signal from blend value. Those habits are the asset. The defaults are the scaffolding that holds still while the habits install.

Cross-cutting habits

Regardless of which scenario matches your use, a few habits are worth carrying into every session.

• Walk the input panel at the start of a session. Ten seconds. Check Enable, Hide, Weight on each slot. Catches weight-zero masking and hide-plot masking before they bite.

• Color first, every time. The habit takes about a week to install. The slot colors carry half the information on every bar.

• Treat On Bar Close? as a deliberate choice. Know which mode you are in. If it is off, expect intra-bar drift and do not interpret a drifting read as a stable one.

• Treat alignment skeptically on near-identical slots. If you did not deliberately differentiate the slots across source, K length, and MA family, alignment is a trend-persistence detector.

• Let warm-up finish before drawing conclusions. A chart reloaded mid-session needs enough slot-timeframe history for the stochastic lookback and both smoothing passes.

• Revisit slot configuration when you change chart timeframes. Slots that made sense on a 1m chart will trip the lower-timeframe guard on a 1H chart if they were set to 5/15/60.

• Know what the pane does not do. It reports state. It does not produce trade instructions. It does not account for spread, liquidity, session, or news. Your decisions live outside the pane.

Cross-references

• Each scenario's settings map back to the full knob walk in Settings.

• Alerts wired on each scenario: Alerts.

• Troubleshooting for symptoms that show up under a scenario: Troubleshooting.

• The alignment trap as it applies to Scenario 1's failure mode and Scenario 3's anti-pattern: Limitations and Trust Boundaries.