Quick Start

This page takes you from "I just added the indicator" to "my first chart is correct and I have seen the two or three behaviours that will confuse me later." It does not teach every knob — Settings does that — and it does not pretend to be the whole picture. It is a verified first run.

Before you start: this pack is for the Base trim of Axiom BB. Three slots, one global repaint toggle, the Lite moving-average library. If you were expecting cross-ticker bands, per-slot repaint control, or the Pro moving-average parameter surface, you are looking at the wrong trim and should route to the CTX pack instead of stretching this one.

Step 1 — Add the indicator and let the defaults render

Apply Axiom BB to a 1-minute chart of a reasonably liquid symbol. Do not change any inputs yet.

You should see, on the same pane as price:

• Three teal lines for Slot 01 at 5 minutes: an upper band, a basis, a lower band.

• Three blue lines for Slot 02 at 15 minutes.

• Three purple lines for Slot 03 at 60 minutes.

• A red upper band, a red lower band, a translucent fill between them, and a lime basis in the middle. That set is the blended band.

Nine slot lines plus three blended lines plus a fill. Twelve lines is the full visible surface at default, and it is dense on purpose — it is giving you three timeframes of context in one place. If you are seeing fewer, something was changed from the shipped defaults; reset the indicator before continuing. If you are seeing more, you have another BB indicator layered on top of this one.

Step 2 — Watch one 5-minute bar close

Keep your eyes on the teal (Slot 01) lines. Wait for the current 5-minute bar to close.

At the close, Slot 01's three lines should visibly step to a new position in one event. They were holding the value they had at the previous 5-minute close and they advance at the moment the 5-minute bar completes.

While you are waiting, Slot 02 at 15 minutes and Slot 03 at 60 minutes will also be holding — they step on their own higher-timeframe cadence, not on the chart bar or on Slot 01's cadence. If the 1-minute chart bar keeps printing but the slot lines are not shifting intrabar, that is the shipped posture doing its job.

Step 3 — Confirm the global repaint posture

Open the indicator's inputs and find the PU Settings group. There is one toggle there: On Bar Close?. It is ON by default.

This toggle decides whether every slot — all three, together — delivers the previous confirmed higher-timeframe value or the live higher-timeframe value. ON is what you just watched: the slot holds until its higher-timeframe bar closes. OFF lets the slot read the current higher-timeframe bar and redraw the line on your chart until that higher-timeframe bar closes.

Flip it OFF for a moment. Watch the same slots. Slot 01, Slot 02, and Slot 03 will all begin drifting with the live higher-timeframe bar instead of holding between closes. Flip it back to ON.

You have now seen what the toggle costs you in each direction. ON gives you a value you can act on without watching for redraw, at the cost of one higher-timeframe bar of latency. OFF gives you a faster read, at the cost of live redraw on every enabled slot at once. Read MTF and Repainting before you fly this switch on a real chart. This trim has no per-slot override for this toggle.

The reason to flip it once on purpose, right now, is not that you will decide today which posture to use. The reason is that the next time you see Slot 01 drift mid-bar on a live chart, you want to recognize it instantly as "OFF is active" rather than "the indicator is broken." Surprise is the enemy of good diagnosis; familiarity is the repair.

Step 4 — Trip the slot-timeframe guard on purpose

Set Slot 01's TimeFrame: to 30S on a 1-minute chart. A slot cannot run on a timeframe lower than the chart timeframe; the indicator will fire a named runtime error ("BB 01 timeframe cannot be lower than the chart timeframe.") and stop rendering.

This is not a bug. It is a guard the indicator uses to refuse a configuration that would silently mean something different from what you asked for. You want to see the error once on purpose, because it will show up for real the first time you forget, and you want it to be a familiar shape rather than a surprise.

Fix the slot by setting TimeFrame: back to 5 (or to any timeframe at or above your chart timeframe).

Step 5 — See the blended band compose itself

Leave the defaults, except set Slot 02's Blended Weight: to 0. The Slot 02 blue lines will stay on the chart. The red blended upper, the red blended lower, and the lime blended basis will recompose — they now average only Slot 01 and Slot 03 at equal weight.

Read that sentence twice if needed: the slot did not disappear from the chart, but it no longer steers the blend. Weight zero is the way to display a slot for context while keeping it silent in the composite.

Now set Slot 02's Blended Weight: back to 33.3. Instead, toggle Hide BB 02 Plot on. The Slot 02 blue lines disappear. The blended band does not change.

That is the hidden-plot trap, and it is easy to misread. Hiding a plot removes only the slot's own three lines from the chart. The slot is still computed, still contributes to the blend at its assigned weight, and still counts in the alignment alerts. If you want a slot excluded from the blend, zero its weight. If you want it excluded from the alignment alerts, disable it entirely.

Un-hide Slot 02 before moving on.

What your chart should look like now

Three slot families visible at their default colours, each stepping on its own higher-timeframe cadence. Blended band visibly inside the envelope of the three slots most of the time, with a lime basis that tracks a weighted middle. On Bar Close? at ON. No runtime error in the TradingView status bar.

If anything on that list is off, stop here and revisit the step that governs it.

Traps that bite new readers

Four behaviours catch nearly every new user at least once. They are all covered in depth elsewhere in this pack; the point of calling them out here is to name them before you can get surprised by them. Each one is documented. Each one has a quiet failure mode where you keep operating under a mistaken mental model for weeks because nothing on the chart announces the mistake.

• The global-not-per-slot toggle. On Bar Close? flips every slot's posture together. OFF is not a per-slot "let this one breathe" switch. Full treatment in MTF and Repainting.

• The hidden-plot trap. Hide BB 0N Plot hides lines, not slots. The slot still contributes to the blend and to alignment alerts. Full treatment in Visuals and Logic and Limitations and Trust Boundaries.

• Length versus Basis Trend Length. These are two different lookbacks for two different questions. Length: is the Bollinger lookback — it drives the standard-deviation envelope and, except for the Lite library's fixed SWMA basis, the basis smoothing. Basis Trend Length: is how far back the basis is compared to decide rising or falling. Confusing them ends badly; treat them as two knobs with two jobs. Full treatment in Settings.

• Timeframe below chart timeframe. The runtime-error guard refuses it. That is not the tool breaking, that is the tool refusing to pretend. Full treatment in Troubleshooting.

Where to go next

You have a correct first chart. When you are ready to tune it, work through Settings, then Visuals and Logic. Before you flip On Bar Close? to OFF for any reason other than the drill above, read MTF and Repainting end to end.