Reading the Optimeter — Dial vs. Mountain

The Optimeter has two faces. Both show you the same thing — where the position stands relative to the system's recommendation, and how close you are to clearing the 12mo+1d LTCG window. Pick the one that matches how you read instruments. Per-position toggle in the card header, permanent default in Settings → Cockpit.

The two layouts

Dial — altimeter read

A radial gauge — like a speedometer or an altimeter, not a clock. The active scale sweeps clockwise from 7:30 (day 0, position entry) to 4:30 (gauge max). The 90° wedge at the bottom (between 4:30 and 7:30) is intentionally blank — that's where the STATE and "to LTCG" sub-windows live.

The needle starts at 7:30 the day you enter and sweeps up toward 4:30 as days accumulate. Key milestones land at their proportional angles along the arc:

• Cyan rim tick — system entry (almost always at the start).
• Gold "12mo+1d" pill — the LTCG-clear day, where the constraint lifts. Look for the bright gold radial line.
• Plasma rim tick — system-recommended exit.
• Gold / silver diamonds — your fill and your set exit.
• Plasma chevron (when present) — the γ-projected peak, if the projection disagrees with the recommendation.
• Green needle — the NOW marker. Green by brand convention: NOW signals "action time." (Distinct from cyan-sys-entry, plasma-sys-exit, gold-user-entry, silver-user-exit.)

Read first: the needle's position relative to the gold LTCG milestone — that answers "am I tax-clear yet?" at a glance. Then check the STATE pill (bottom-left) and the "TO LTCG" / ✓ CLEARED pill (bottom-right).

Strongest when you want a single-number answer to "how far along am I?" — like checking altitude before a landing.

Mountain — profitability read

A horizontal timeline with the projected profitability curve underneath. Cyan = system entry, plasma pink = system exit, gold = your entry, silver = your exit. The neutral hairline marks the LTCG-clear day. The shaded mountain is the system's projection; hatched portions are the future (forecast confidence dims the hatch as you look further out).

Read first: where NOW (the vertical green line) sits relative to the green zone between entry and exit. Then check the P&L readout top-left.

Strongest when you want a dense 2-D signal — current P&L vs. projected peak, vs. where the system says to act.

Same data, same vocabulary

Both views consume the same OptimeterFrame and the same zone state from lib/optimeter/zone.ts. If the dial says APEX, the mountain will too. If CONSTRAINT-LOCKED overrides on the dial because LTCG isn't cleared yet, the mountain's badge shows the same overlay.

This is the FC-001 invariant: the two layouts are read-time preferences, not separate sources of truth.

Setting your default

/settings/cockpit writes the DB-backed default — that's what every position page renders on first paint. The in-card pill toggle on each position only changes the layout for the current session (it writes localStorage, not the DB). This separation is deliberate: try the other view for a few minutes without re-pinning your default.

Tips

• At 1920px+ desks, both layouts render at full hero size with no cropping. The dial's mini variant (220px) is a future mobile compromise.
• Tabular nums everywhere — every number on both layouts uses tabular (fixed-width) numerals, so columns line up across the card without micro-adjustments.
• The 12mo+1d hairline on the Mountain is neutral, NOT gold. On the Dial, gold marks your entry and the 12mo+1d pill. It also paints the CONSTRAINT-LOCKED state (the STATE pill, the countdown and the sweep arc) until the 12mo+1d hold clears. On the Mountain the 12mo+1d line is never gold.
• γ-peak divergence: when the γ-peak (optimumExitDay) differs from the system exit (systemExit.day), the dial shows a small plasma chevron on the rim at the projection's peak. Treat it as a "the projection thinks the peak is here" hint; the recommendation is still the plasma rim tick.

Reading the state badge

CONSTRAINT-LOCKED and LTCG-CLEARED are override labels — the base zone is still derived underneath. The override decides which color and which label render.

See also

• OPTOMON Glossary — Optimeter — canonical definition and full color-binding table.
• OPTOMON Glossary — Optimeter Dial — altimeter presentation, marker semantics, and zone-state vocabulary.
• OPTOMON Glossary — Zone — the five-state categorical label both layouts surface.
• OPTOMON Glossary — LTCG Window — the 12mo+1d milestone both layouts render.
• OPTOMON Glossary — Word-Formulaic Synopsis (A.20) — the textual concordance of any position: every glyph on the visual has a paired clause-fragment in a deterministic synopsis. The WFS is the alt-text twin of the dial / mountain and is what alert emails, screen readers, and downstream agents consume.
• Example WFS Briefing — TSLA long-call — the long-form (~770-word) walkthrough of one position: defines every term inline, walks through the visual marker-by-marker, and lays out the reader's options with quantified trade-offs. This is the format for first-time readers, advisors handing positions to clients, and regulator-readable position statements.