Settings

Every knob on this indicator is a decision with a cost. This page walks each one in that shape — what it does, what it is changing under the hood, what it buys you, what it costs you, and how to audit the change on your own chart. There are no recommended values here. Defaults are starting scaffolding, not a prescription.

A posture that pays off across this page: change one thing at a time, and keep a mental sentence ready — "this change should do X; if it does not, I am wrong about what it does." The hardest configuration mistakes are not the ones where a knob does not work. They are the ones where a knob works exactly as designed and the reader believed it did something else. If you find yourself three changes deep trying to "fix the look" of the pane, stop and reset to the last version you understood.

If you want a one-screen map of the Base trim's configuration surface before you read in detail:

• Three identical slot blocks. Each slot has an enable, a hide-plot, a source, a higher timeframe, a baseline length and MA type, a slow length and MA type, a line width, and a weight.

• A global oscillator block with an ATR length, an ATR sensitivity, an overbought level, and an oversold level.

• A display block with a toggle for the blend lines and a blend line width.

• A master smoothing block with an enable, an MA type, and a length.

• A single Power User block containing one switch: On Bar Close?.

That is the whole surface. No per-slot repaint toggle. No per-slot symbol override. No per-slot Power User block. If the knob you are looking for is not in that list, it is a CTX knob, not a Base one.

Default tripwires to notice before you start adjusting

These are the defaults that will mislead a fresh reader in predictable ways if you take them at face value.

• Weights of 33.3 per slot look like a three-way vote. They are not a vote. They are a weighted average across three slots that may be measuring very similar things if you have not differentiated them.

• Three timeframes of 5, 15, 60 form an escalating stack that assumes the chart is at or below the fastest configured slot. On a 1H or 4H chart, the lower configured slots do not collapse upward; they violate the rule and the script raises a named runtime error. The pane is not broken in that state. It is refusing to run a slot below the chart timeframe. See MTF & Repainting.

• On Bar Close? = true is the honest default. Turning it off is a deliberate choice, not a convenience. Every slot follows the switch, not just the one you are thinking about when you flip it.

• ATR Sensitivity = 1.0 is the multiplier that leaves the normalized distance unchanged. It is not a calibrated neutral across instruments. Different symbols and different timeframes will want different sensitivity if you want the pane to spend useful time between 20 and 80 instead of pinning the edges.

• Master Smoothing = off is the honest default too. If you turn it on before you know what the unsmoothed blend looks like on your chart, you will not be able to tell whether a calmer pane is the tool helping you or the tool hiding what it was about to tell you.

Per-slot primary inputs

The three slots are identical in their input surface. Slot 01 is documented in full below; slots 02 and 03 behave identically with different default timeframes.

Enable MA 01 — bool, default true

Turns the slot on. A disabled slot does not compute, does not plot, does not contribute to the blend, and does not fire alerts. Disabling a slot is the clean way to take it out of the pane entirely.

If you want the slot to keep computing and alerting but stop steering the blend, that is Blended Weight = 0 instead — the slot is still on, still plots, still alerts. See the Weight discussion below and the observer slot pattern in Workflows.

Hide MA 01 Plot — bool, default false

Removes the slot's line from the pane while leaving the slot active. The slot still computes, still contributes to the blend at its configured weight, and still fires its own alerts. Useful when a slot's only job is to weight the blend and its line is visual clutter. The reverse failure mode is easy: a hidden slot is easy to forget about. If you rely on this pattern, annotate your configuration outside the tool so a past-you six months from now remembers what was on.

Source — series, default close

The price series this slot measures. Unlike CTX, the Base trim does not expose a per-slot ticker override; every slot reads this source on the chart's instrument. Changing source from close changes what "distance from baseline" means on that slot — hl2 or ohlc4 pull the reading toward the bar's center instead of its close, which tends to dampen reversals that show up first in the close. Source changes are cheap to test on a live chart: change one slot, watch the pane, change it back.

TimeFrame — string, defaults "5", "15", "60" for slots 01, 02, 03

Higher timeframe the slot runs on. Blank inherits the chart timeframe. The script enforces slot timeframe >= chart timeframe at runtime; violating that raises a named error you will see on the chart. The whole MTF story — how slot values are pulled, what "closed" means for a higher-timeframe bar, and why lower configured slots stop the pane instead of collapsing upward — is in MTF & Repainting. This is the highest-consequence setting in the slot block after the switch.

Length — int, default 20, minimum 1

Lookback for the slot's baseline MA. Longer means a slower, more stable baseline — the fast line moves less often, and the slot responds less to short-term price moves. Shorter means a baseline that chases price, which can make the fast line twitchy, especially when sensitivity is high.

Type — MA family, default EMA

MA family used for the baseline. The Base trim reads from the Lite companion library, which means the families you can choose here are the Lite-supported set. A family's personality does matter:

• SMA — even weighting across the window. Reacts last but drifts less on whippy bars.

• EMA — default. Recent bars weigh more; responds faster to fresh moves; carries some overshoot on reversals.

• WMA — stronger recency bias than SMA, less than EMA; useful when EMA feels too twitchy but SMA feels too late.

• Others exposed by the Lite library — each behaves according to its own family convention. Where they differ from the three above, they tend to differ in responsiveness or smoothing character rather than in fundamental intent.

A reader who wants finer parameter control (a family with a specific smoothing factor, for example) is already on the CTX ladder. Base keeps the MA surface to the Lite set on purpose — one more knob per slot is one more piece of negotiation between you and the pane.

Slow Length — int, default 3, minimum 1

Length of the smoothing applied to the slot's fast value to produce the slot's slow line. Default 3 is short on purpose: it makes the fast-vs-slow relationship a short-horizon read, which is what colors the slot. The tradeoff is that crossings are frequent. If you want a slot whose color flips less and whose crossings carry more weight, raise this.

Slow Type — MA family, default EMA

MA family for the slow line. Same Lite-library constraint as the baseline. The slow line is smoothing an already-bounded series (0..100), not a price series, so the family choice matters less here than on the baseline. EMA at 3 is a reasonable default and is what the pane is tuned around.

Line Width — int, default 2, minimum 1

Thickness of the slot plot. Cosmetic. If you want the slot lines to fall back behind the blend, drop to 1. If you want a slot to stand forward, push it up.

Blended Weight — float, default 33.3, minimum 0

How strongly this slot steers the blend. A weight of zero keeps the slot alive — it still plots, still fires per-slot alerts, still counts toward the alignment alerts — but stops contributing to the blend fast and blend slow lines. This is the observer-slot pattern: the slot is visible and alerting, but the blend only averages the slots you wanted it to.

Two things to notice about weights:

• Weights do not need to sum to anything specific. The blend normalizes by the total weight of slots that are enabled and not zero. Setting every enabled slot to 33.3 and setting every enabled slot to 100 produce the same blend, because the ratios are the same.

• Weights do not add "strength." A slot with a large weight does not make the pane "more certain." It just makes the blend track that slot more closely. If you are not sure what you want the blend to emphasize, leave the weights equal while you learn what each slot is contributing.

Global oscillator inputs

ATR Length — int, default 14, minimum 1

Window used when the script measures ATR for normalization. ATR is a volatility proxy; this is the dial that decides how far back "recent volatility" looks. Shorter ATR means the scale reacts faster to recent bars — in practice, that can make the reading hunt the boundaries on an instrument that just had a spike. Longer ATR calms the scale and also makes it slower to recognize a genuine regime shift. The default 14 is a common period in practice because it balances those two pressures reasonably; it is not a calibrated value for any specific symbol.

The audit move: change ATR Length to something meaningfully different (7, then 30), watch the same chart segment, and note how the pane's behavior shifts. You are looking for the length at which the pane reads recognizably in sessions like today's.

ATR Sensitivity — float, default 1.0, step 0.1

Multiplier applied to the ATR-normalized distance before the pane is bounded into 0..100. This is the single most consequential dial in the global block.

• Higher sensitivity pushes the reading toward 0 or 100 faster. A 2.0 will pin the pane at the boundary more often than a 1.0 on the same chart.

• Lower sensitivity flattens the reading toward 50. A 0.3 will make the pane hover near the midline and rarely reach the reference band.

The important behavior to understand is what the boundaries mean at high sensitivity: pinning at 100 is not evidence that price is "twice as stretched" as a reading at 70. Pinning is the clamp doing its job. Sensitivity changes where the clamp starts biting, which changes what "overbought" looks like on your pane. It does not change the underlying price-to-baseline distance.

The audit move: on a chart you know, toggle sensitivity between 0.5 and 2.0 and read the pane. Pick the value at which the pane visibly distinguishes moderate and extreme stretch on that instrument — not the value that gives you the most boundary action. More color activity is not more information. If the pane spends most of a typical session between roughly 20 and 80, with occasional visits to the reference band during moves you care about, the dial is in the useful part of its range. If the pane either lives at a boundary or refuses to leave the 45-55 band, you are reading the clamp, not the instrument.

Two common misreads to resist once you start adjusting sensitivity: "higher is more responsive" and "lower is more accurate." Neither is true. Sensitivity moves where the clamp bites. It does not change what is happening to price. A reader who raises it chasing more activity ends up with a pane that pins, which looks emphatic and is mostly noise. A reader who lowers it chasing calm ends up with a pane that cannot resolve the moves they wanted to see. The right number is instrument-specific and session-specific; the tool will not pick it without lying.

Overbought Level — float, default 70, step 0.1

Level of the dashed reference line in the upper half of the pane. Driven by the user input; moves when you change it.

Three things this input does not do:

• It does not trigger an alert. The script has no alert condition for crossing Overbought Level.

• It does not change the fast or slow computation. Only the reference line moves.

• It does not define what "overbought" means on your instrument. The line is a zone for attention, not a threshold for action.

Oversold Level — float, default 30, step 0.1

Mirror of the overbought input, on the lower side. Same three non-behaviors apply. It is a reference line, not a trigger.

Display inputs

Plot Blended Fast/Slow — bool, default true

Shows the blended fast line, the blended slow line, and the fill between them. Turning this off leaves only the slot lines and the reference grid. Readers who want to work from the slot lines alone sometimes find this useful; most readers do not. If you are turning it off to clean up a screenshot, fine — if you are turning it off because you disagree with the blend, you probably want a weight change instead.

Blended Line Width — int, default 3, minimum 1

Thickness of the blend fast and blend slow plots. Cosmetic.

Master smoothing inputs

Master smoothing runs after the blend. It is a final MA pass on the already-blended fast and slow lines, re-clamped into 0..100.

Enable Master Smoothing — bool, default false

Off by default for a reason. A master pass adds stability; it also adds lag. Both effects are real. Turning it on before you know what the unsmoothed blend looks like on your chart produces a pane that feels calm without you knowing what calmness cost you.

Master MA Type — MA family, default EMA

Family used for the master pass. Same Lite-library set as the slots.

Master Length — int, default 3, minimum 1

Length of the master pass. A short length is subtle — you may not notice the lag until a regime flip arrives late. A long length can delay regime flips visibly; the pane looks more confident because it is slower to change its mind, not because it knows more.

The audit move: enable master smoothing with a length around 5 to 10 on a chart you already know, and compare against the unsmoothed blend side by side on the same segment. Notice how much later the smoothed version tells you a regime has flipped. That delay is what master smoothing costs. Some readers want that delay. The question is whether you do, today, on this instrument.

Global Power User input

On Bar Close? — bool, default true

The repaint switch for the whole pane. In the Base trim there is exactly one of these — not one per slot. Every enabled slot follows this toggle. That is a deliberate shape of the trim, not an oversight. A single honesty contract for the whole pane is easier to reason about under pressure than three separate ones, and the Base trim's design prioritizes legibility over fine-grained control. The CTX trim takes the other side of that tradeoff.

• ON waits for each slot's higher-timeframe bar to close before reporting a new value on that slot. The slot's reading is stable once written.

• OFF reads the live higher-timeframe bar. The value can move as that bar evolves and locks in when the bar closes. This is repainting, plainly — not a euphemism. The tradeoff is faster reaction.

The whole MTF and repaint contract, including a verification you can run in five minutes, is in MTF & Repainting. Read that page before you leave this switch off for any setup that matters — particularly any setup that routes alerts into another system, where the higher-timeframe bar's continued evolution will not be visible later.

MA family table (Lite library)

The Base trim reads from the Lite companion library. A short table of how the common families behave in this pane, honest about what Base does not expose.

Any family not listed behaves according to the Lite library's implementation. If you want advanced parameter control, that is a CTX decision — the Base trim deliberately keeps the MA-family surface small.

Where to go next

• You have a feel for each knob and want to see the pane the way the tool "thinks" about it: Visuals & Logic.

• You are deciding how to use the global On Bar Close? switch: MTF & Repainting.

• You are tuning around specific use cases: Workflows.

• You are about to push sensitivity or master smoothing to extremes: Limitations & Trust Boundaries before you do.