Green, yellow, red

Three states, one word a week: how a Circle says how it is, beside the numbers it reports.

Each week a body takes its Turn on The Board — a few lines to the Whole about what was done, what will be done, what was learned, what is needed, what is offered. And one more thing, which is not a line of prose and not a number: green, yellow, or red.

It is deliberately coarse. A health signal that admits of nuance is a signal that can be argued with, softened, and eventually averaged into nothing; three states force a judgment that a reader can act on at a glance. Green means the body is well and needs nothing. Yellow means something is off and is still ours to carry. Red means help is needed now — and a body of ten thousand Circles can scan for red in a second, which is the entire point.

What it reports is the Circle's own condition, not the work's progress. The numbers already say whether the Quest is on track; this says whether the people carrying it are all right. Those two come apart more often than anyone expects: a Quest can be on schedule while the body carrying it quietly comes undone, and a Circle in real trouble will usually post good numbers for a month before it stops posting at all.

Which is why the signal only works if a red costs nothing. A body that has learned to read red as failure will never see one — the state will exist and will not be reported, and the Superorganism will be blind exactly where it most needs to see. Posting red early is the strong move, and a body that receives one well is what makes the instrument real.

Also called: the health signal · the colour on the Turn · red Stands on: The Turn · The Board · Circle Coherence · Transparency · Zero Blame Environment Opens onto: The Circle's Scorecard · The Score · The Season Sheet · The Monthly Synthesis · Issue · Ask · Requests and offers · Mutual Aid · Heads-up · Safety check · The Escalation Ladder · Stop · Sensing The Field In play: the weekly Turn Sources: LIØNSBERG Wiki Books/The Great Game of LIØNSBERG/The Great Game of LIØNSBERG.md, §The Turns (draft — one clause) · The Season Sheet (line 13, how is the Circle? one word, and a line) · The Circle's Scorecard Open: The canon gives the three colours a clause and never defines them; what distinguishes yellow from red, and what anyone is obliged to do when a red appears, is unwritten. · The Season Sheet's one word, and a line is plainly the same instrument at a different beat, and the two have not been cohered.