INSTRUMENT WORKSPACE
Make the market context impossible to miss.
A field guide to symbol, timeframe, history/live state, indicators, drawings, panes and widget context in the chart workstation.
THE WORKING SURFACE
The chart is where context becomes visible
Chart brings candles, indicators, drawings, panes and decision widgets into one working view. Its job is not to make the screen busier; its job is to preserve the context behind a read.
Start with the market identity, then add only the visual channels that answer the question. If a study does not change the decision or explain an observation, it is probably noise.
FIRST PASS
Set the context in this order
Confirm the symbol and venue
A price is not meaningful without the instrument and market feed that produced it.
Choose the timeframe
Keep the timeframe aligned with the question you brought from Research or your Strategy document.
Wait for the data state
Let history and live updates settle. Loading, empty and unavailable states are operational signals, not chart signals.
Add an instrument
Open the Indicators catalog or the chart controls, then choose a pane, overlay or composite whose meaning you can name.
Browse the catalogAnnotate with restraint
Use drawings, callouts and widgets to mark a decision-relevant event. Keep the source and timeframe visible beside the mark.
COMPOSITION
Panes, overlays and widgets have different jobs
An overlay shares the price field. A pane owns a separate scale. A widget summarizes or reframes a state. These are not interchangeable placements, and moving a signal to a more prominent surface does not make it more reliable.
The chart settings platform keeps indicator inputs, plots, presentation controls and Paint behavior together. Change the exposed setting that answers the question, then keep the same configuration when you compare the result.
- OverlayUse when the mark belongs on the price field, such as a band, level or trend line.
- PaneUse when the indicator has its own scale or should be read as a separate state.
- WidgetUse when the decision needs a compact lens, status or comparison rather than another full series.
WORKSPACE STATE
Drawings and settings are part of the workspace
Use the drawing controls for selection, creation, undo, redo and clear. A drawing is a claim about a market context, so verify the symbol and timeframe before assuming it belongs to the current view.
Signed-in workspaces can sync account-owned layout and preferences. Settings shows whether the current session is local-only, saving, synced or retrying. When a sync conflict appears, choose which side should win before continuing.
- Local-onlyUseful for a quick session, but it is not the same as an account-backed workspace.
- Syncing or retryingResolve the account or network condition before treating a reload as proof that the latest layout was saved.
- ConflictA conflict is a choice about which settings side to overwrite. Do not resolve it by guessing.
Market activity can be quiet. Treat a feed-specific loading, error or stale indicator as evidence about the data seam; do not infer staleness from the absence of a new tick alone.
REMEMBER on a signal callout stores the resolved occurrence — its identity, its anchor and the data revision it was computed from — and labels it browser-observed, because that is what it is. It does not start a watcher, change an automation draft, or promote anything. Capturing the same occurrence twice is the same record; capturing it again after the data underneath was revised adds a new version beside the first.
NEXT SURFACE