The ink language
The printer prints black on white; every meaningful mark after that is your own ink. Colour is never the only carrier of meaning here — every role also has a letter, so the language still works in black and white, on a photocopy, or for anyone who cannot distinguish the colours.
Run switchback legend any time to print your own mapping. What follows is the mapping itself.
Roles are assigned to the pens you actually have, in priority order. A role with no matching pen prints as a circled letter instead, so a black pen and a highlighter is already a complete kit.
| Role | Letter | Meaning | Suggested pen | On a proof, the agent… |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ask | Q | a numbered question for the AI | blue | answers it |
| Stop | R | blocker, risk, broken, or not understood | red | challenges it |
| Keep | G | evidence, confident, something that worked | green | goes deeper |
| Crux | X | the one thing that matters most | highlighter | re-centres around it |
| Maybe | O | an idea, a possibility, a what-if | orange | explores it |
| Sense | P | gut feeling, intuition, felt reaction | purple | justifies it |
| Draft | D | provisional; do not trust yet | grey, or pencil | applies the edit |
| Reason | B | what you think; the main content | black | — |
Ask always claims blue whenever a blue pen exists, ahead of every other role. The rest are matched by colour in the priority order above; you can also pin a specific pen to a specific role in desk mode instead of accepting the default.
Structural marks
Section titled “Structural marks”These carry meaning in any ink, on any page:
| Mark | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ○ round an item | commit to it — on a proof, this locks the paragraph |
| ✕ through an item | rejected, but kept visible in the read-back |
| → | leads to, or causes |
| ▭ | this is a decision point |
| ? in the margin | revisit |
| ! in the margin | important |
| ✓ a tick | read, nothing to add |
Confidence marks
Section titled “Confidence marks”Drawn beside a claim, in any ink:
| Mark | Level | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ● + | high | “I’d bet on this” |
| ◐ ~ | medium | “probably, but soft” |
| ○ ! | low | “guessing, unsure” |
Numbers written instead of dots (“50%”, “80%”) are read exactly as written and reported as such — they are never converted into dots on your behalf.
The one-pen fallback
Section titled “The one-pen fallback”Every role that has no matching pen becomes its circled letter, drawn in whatever ink you have. That means the whole language still works with a single black pen: circle a Q instead of writing in blue, a circled R instead of red, and so on. Nothing about read mode changes based on which path you used to mark the page.