# Legend for /color, /colors, /plates, /tech, /tools (plain language)

## Confidence - how sure we are about a colour
- **Hank verified** - highest. Hank checked or edited it himself. Only Hank's own edits and checks get this. When Hank edits any field, that colour becomes Hank verified.
- **high** - a strong direct read. Example: the settings are known and the colour was sampled straight from a photo of that burned cell (dot code and fiducials lined up).
- **medium** - an algorithm read or guess. Includes colours read by a script from old photos and model predictions from the energy-density model.
- **low** - a weak guess, an untested published starting point copied from another machine, or a mapping that could still be wrong.
- **untested** - never burned here. **reported** - somebody else said it works. **measured** - a script measured a colour in a photo or scan; its confidence says how much to trust that.

Order on the site: Hank verified first, then high, medium, low, then untested. Inside each group, vivid colours (gold, red, green, blue) come before black and grey.

## One colour = one layer (sub-layers for multi-pass stacks)
- Each colour is **one LightBurn layer**. Multi-pass stacks (different angles, prep+colour, etc.) live as **sub-layers inside that one layer**, not as separate colours or separate regular layers.
- Example: HD fill black is **1 colour / 1 entry** with **16 sub-layers** (angles in order). LightBurn documents a limit of about **11 sub-layers per layer**; stacks above that are flagged and may need an 11+split after testing.
- The site shows the full Cut Settings Editor field set (Fill / Line / Image) per colour, with sub-layers as tabs. Hank can edit `cut_settings` and `sublayers[]` when signed in.
- **Sub-layer `.clb` / `.lbrn2` serialization is UNVERIFIED** until Hank does one LightBurn open-test (open, confirm Multi tabs, re-save, diff). Do **not** treat library or plate exports that carry sibling CutSettings as verified. `lines_per_inch` and `min_tabs_per_shape` are stored for the site only — they have no LightBurn XML element.

## LightBurn library download
- `/api/library.clb` (and the buttons on /colors) builds a `.clb` from the same live colour DB the browsers show. Filters on the page are passed through.
- One `<Entry>` per colour; one sibling `<CutSetting>` per sub-layer. Same unverified note as above.

## How colours are collected
1. Test plates are numbered P001, P002, and so on. Each plate is burned on one named material only.
2. Each plate gets ONE public photo, stored once at /plates/P005/photo.jpg. It is never uploaded twice, and every colour taken from that plate links back to that one photo.
3. The photo is read cell by cell. The engraved dot code says which plate it is, the three corner fiducials line the photo up, and the unburned white patch sets the white balance.
4. Cite a cell like this: **Plate 5, A5**. That means plate P005, row A (the top row), column 5 from the left. Rows run A-Z (skipping I on small plates), columns 1, 2, 3 and so on.
5. Each material has its own colour profile. A colour that works on polished stainless may look different on an electrical box or a galvanized sheet, so colours are never mixed across materials.
6. Guesses from the energy-density model (E = watts / (speed x interval)) are marked medium or low, never verified.
7. When Hank is logged in he can edit or verify any field (including full cut settings and sub-layers). His edits are saved as Hank verified.
8. Old photos: some colours came from old chart photos whose plate was never labelled in the picture. Those say "legacy photo, plate unknown". Next time that plate is photographed it should be labelled with a P### number so it can be linked to its photo.

Machine: ComMarker B4 60W MOPA, 110 mm lens, LightBurn 1.7.08.