Visuals & Logic

This page answers two questions the tool will keep asking you: what is every line on my chart, and what is it actually telling me? It covers every visible element, every meaningful state change, the trap most first-contact readers fall into, and how to read slot disagreement rather than smooth it away.

If you have not yet walked the Quick Start, this page will still make sense — it just assumes you have Axiom MA on a chart. It does not re-teach inputs; those live in Settings. It does teach you what the inputs look like once they reach your chart.

The visible elements

Axiom MA draws four lines at most. On the shipped defaults you see all four. There are no bands, no fills, no arrows, no shapes, and no labels — the overlay is intentionally line-only. Everything the tool has to say to you, it says in lines, line colours, and line widths.

The three slot lines

• Slot 01 draws in teal when the slot reads uptrend, and in the same teal at half opacity when it reads downtrend. Default timeframe 5 minutes.

• Slot 02 draws in blue when up, blue at half opacity when down. Default timeframe 15 minutes.

• Slot 03 draws in purple when up, purple at half opacity when down. Default timeframe 60 minutes.

• Each slot's line uses its own Line Width:, shipped at 2.

A slot's line sits on its own smoothed price trajectory — the MA of the slot's Source:, at the slot's Length:, computed inside the slot's TimeFrame:. Two consequences follow from that:

• On a chart timeframe below a slot's own timeframe, the slot advances in visible steps. The line holds flat through a 5-minute bar and steps to a new value when the 5-minute bar closes. If you see a slot holding flat across many chart bars, that is not a bug; that is a higher-timeframe slot on a confirmed-bar posture.

• Under On Bar Close? OFF, those steps melt into continuous drift inside the HTF bar. The line moves as new chart-timeframe ticks update the partially-formed HTF candle. The step reappears at the HTF close. See MTF & Repainting for what that means structurally and what it costs.

The slot's line colour

The slot's trend colour is a direct, disclosable comparison. The slot is in an uptrend when the current MA value is greater than or equal to the MA value Trend Length bars ago on the slot's own timeframe. Otherwise, it is in a downtrend.

Two framings worth holding on to:

• Trend colour reports whether the slot's smoothed line is above or below its own past self. It is a description of the slot's current vertical position against its recent history, not a regime classification and not a price-versus-MA cross.

• If Trend Length: is 0, the trend read is disabled entirely — the slot's computed trend becomes false and the line renders in its down-state colour at half opacity regardless of what price is doing. Zero is not "no trend filter"; zero is "do not compute a trend."

The blended line

A single thicker line drawn from the three slot values, in one of two colours:

• Lime when the weight-majority vote across voting slots reads uptrend.

• Red when the weight-majority vote reads downtrend.

Default Line Width: is 3, one step thicker than the default slot widths. That thickness is not a claim of importance — it is a visual separation so the composite line does not get lost among its components.

The blended line's colour does not fade. There is no half-opacity middle state. It is lime or it is red; nothing in the code interpolates between them. More on the consequences of that below.

Two hidden count plots

The script also registers two plots you cannot see on the chart — by design. They are:

• Active Uptrend Count — how many enabled slots with non-na MA values are currently reporting uptrend.

• Active Downtrend Count — how many enabled slots with non-na MA values are currently reporting downtrend.

These are emitted with display.none so they do not clutter the overlay. They exist to be referenced from TradingView alert message templates — for example, to build an alert message that says "2 of 3 slots up." See Alerts for the exact use.

What a state change means

Four state changes are worth recognising on sight, because they are the four that actually carry information.

A slot's line steps to a new value

A new bar closed on the slot's timeframe. Under On Bar Close? ON, the slot advances one confirmed step. Under OFF, the slot's line was already drifting; the close is the moment the drift is frozen into history. Either way, the step is the slot telling you something has closed — not something has started.

A slot's line changes colour

The slot's trend state flipped. Its current MA value now sits on the other side of its own Trend Length-bars-ago value. That can happen:

• because the MA itself moved while the Trend Length-bars-ago value stayed put;

• because the Trend Length-bars-ago value moved while the MA sat still;

• in practice, because both are moving together and the comparison crossed.

A flip on a short Trend Length is often a flicker the reader does not want. A flip on a longer Trend Length is the slot asking for more attention. Neither is a tradable event on its own; it is a smoothed-state change on the slot's own timeframe.

Price crosses a slot's line

Price is now on the other side of the slot's smoothed value at this bar. The slot itself does not fire anything on that cross — there are no price-cross alerts in this tool, only trend-state alerts. A price-versus-MA cross is entirely a read you do by eye. The tool neither celebrates it nor suppresses it.

The blended line flips colour

The weight-majority vote across voting slots changed sides. That is a different event from "a slot's colour flipped." A blend flip requires enough voting weight on the other side to carry the majority, which can happen because:

• one high-weight slot just flipped, taking the majority with it;

• several smaller-weight slots accumulated to a majority after a long drift;

• a tied vote moved off the tie (and under the rule, ties go to uptrend, so a tied blend reads lime).

The blended line is built on a rule, not a feel. That rule is what makes the flip meaningful; it is also what keeps you honest about what a flip does and does not mean.

The hidden-plot trap

This one bites almost every first-contact reader at least once. Name it out loud before it names itself on your chart.

Hiding a plot removes the line from the chart. It does not remove the slot from the blend, from the per-slot trend alert, or from the alignment alerts once the slot has a non-na MA value.

Concretely, a slot with Hide MA NN Plot = true:

• does not draw on the price pane;

• does compute its MA and its trend state;

• does contribute to the blend if its Blended Weight: is non-zero;

• does fire its own per-slot MA NN Is Uptrend / MA NN Is Downtrend alerts;

• does count toward the alignment alerts (All MA Slots Uptrend, All MA Slots Downtrend) once its MA value is non-na.

If you want a slot visually absent and also out of the blend, set Blended Weight: to zero and hide the plot. If you want the slot out of everything — including the alignment alerts — toggle Enable MA NN off. Hiding is the visual action; weight zero is the blend action; disable is the total action.

A concrete consequence you will likely meet on a real chart: an alignment alert fails to fire even though the two visible slots both look lime. The third slot — the one you hid — is still enabled, has a valid MA value, and is still on the other side. That is the tool doing exactly what it says. Alerts covers this case in detail.

Reading slot disagreement

The most valuable thing a three-slot stack gives you is legible disagreement. When Slot 01 flips teal, Slot 02 stays dim blue, and Slot 03 sits in dim purple, the slot timeframes are telling you something specific: a short-horizon turn is happening while the medium- and longer-horizon contexts have not turned. That is information. The tool's job is to show it to you, not to average it away.

The blended line is not a consensus read

The blend is a weighted composite. Its line is a weighted average of the contributing slot values; its colour is a weight-majority vote, with ties going to uptrend. A lime blend is compatible with several states you should not collapse into "the stack is up":

• Three slots all up — consensus. Blend is lime for the obvious reason.

• Two slots up, one down, roughly equal weights — majority. Blend is lime, but one timeframe is disagreeing.

• Two slots down, one up, lopsided weights in favour of the up slot — minority by count, majority by weight. Blend is lime, and two of your three timeframes are down. This is the case readers most commonly misread.

• Tied weights — up-voting weight exactly equals down-voting weight. Blend is lime because the tie-break goes to uptrend.

In every case, the rule is honest — the blend is doing exactly what it says it does. The point is that "blend colour" is a compressed read and "slot colours underneath" is the expanded read. Keep the three slot lines visible if you want the tool to earn its seat on your chart.

Agreement, cancellation, and a heavy slot carrying the vote

Three blend patterns to learn to tell apart by eye:

• Agreement. The blend sits tightly among the three slot lines, and the three slot lines are grouped. The blend's colour matches the obvious read.

• Cancellation. The three slot lines are spread out, the blend sits in the middle of them, and the blend's colour is not obviously matching any particular slot. The blend is averaging disagreement; the number is well-defined, but the read is ambiguous. Do not let the well-defined number give you false confidence.

• Heavy slot carrying the vote. The blend sits noticeably closer to one slot than the others, and the blend's colour follows that slot even when the other two disagree. One of your slots has a heavier weight. The blend is telling you about that slot more than about the group.

A chart with three visibly separated slot lines and a blended line that changes colour without the slots clearly aligning is a chart showing you cancellation or a heavy-slot vote. Read the slots. Do not read the blend.

The fade asymmetry — slot lines dim, the blend does not

A first-contact reader looking at a dim Slot 03 next to a lime blend might import an intuition from the slot lines onto the blend: "dim means neutral, so the blend's colour is the strong signal." That intuition is wrong on this tool.

• Slot colours fade between their up-state and down-state variants. The down state is the same colour at half opacity.

• Blend colour does not fade. There is no half-opacity variant. Lime and red are the only blended-line states.

A pale-looking blended line on your chart is not a dimmed or neutral blend; there is no such state. It may be a crowded overlay, a background contrast issue, or simply the chart showing you a lime or red line that happens to look muted. Open the Data Window and confirm. If you ever want a "neutral" blend, that state does not exist — the weight-majority rule always resolves, and ties resolve to uptrend.

Teaching asset — the annotated default chart

Caption (intended figure): A 1-minute chart of a liquid regular-session symbol, Axiom MA loaded on the Base defaults. From bottom to top of the legend: a teal line on the 5-minute cadence (Slot 01), a blue line on the 15-minute cadence (Slot 02), a purple line on the 60-minute cadence (Slot 03), and a thicker lime line representing the weight-majority blended MA. Slot 01 is highlighted mid-step at a 5-minute close; Slot 03 is highlighted holding flat through several chart bars; the blended line is called out as the weighted composite of the three. Two sidebars: "slot colours fade on the down state; blend does not" and "this is what steps versus drift look like under On Bar Close? ON."

Intended placement: inline near the top of this page, above the "what a state change means" section.

Teaching asset — the agreement-versus-cancellation blend

Caption (intended figure): Two side-by-side frames of the same blended MA value. In the left frame, three slot lines converge and the blended line sits on top of the convergence at a lime colour; the read is consensus. In the right frame, the three slot lines fan out above and below the blended line, the blended value happens to land near the same price level, and the blended colour is still lime — but the slot lines are showing cancellation and one heavy-weight slot is holding the vote. Callout: "the blended price can be the same in both frames; the blended colour is the same in both frames; the underlying stack is telling different stories. Read the slots."

Intended placement: in this page near the "reading slot disagreement" section or mirrored into Limitations & Trust Boundaries at polish time.

Quick verification you can run on your own chart

Three short checks. Each takes under a minute and confirms something this page has claimed.

1. Hidden plot does not move the blend. Note the blended line's price level. Toggle Hide MA 01 Plot on, click OK, note the blended level again. The level should not move. Toggle it back off.

2. Weight zero changes the blend when that slot was contributing a distinct value. Note the blended level. Set Blended Weight: on Slot 01 to 0, click OK. The blended level should usually shift toward the remaining slots' composite; if Slot 01 was already sitting at the same value as the composite, the movement can be hard to see. Restore the weight to 33.3.

3. Blend colour tracks vote, not slope. Set the three TimeFrame: values to your chart timeframe, set Trend Length: on Slot 01 to 1, set Slots 02 and 03 to 0 (trend disabled → computed as down), keep weights at 33.3 each. Slot 01's trend will flicker with each bar; Slots 02 and 03 will permanently report down. The blended-trend vote is 33.3 up vs. 66.6 down; the blend should be red regardless of whether the blended MA is sloping up or down at that moment. Restore defaults.

These are also named in Settings and in MTF & Repainting for slightly different reasons. Running them once removes the need to re-read the page every session.

Where to go next

• Alerts — how each of these visible states is also an alert-condition, and what a fired alert does and does not confirm.

• MTF & Repainting — the mechanism behind the step-vs-drift difference you saw in step one.

• Limitations & Trust Boundaries — what the blend, the alerts, and the defaults are and are not entitled to tell you.