Reading the Blueprint
A practical guide to reading any Master Blueprint diagram: check the layer, the color, the line, and the termination — in that order.
How to read a blueprint diagram
The Master Blueprint diagrams pack a great deal into a single page. Read in a fixed order, they are unambiguous. This guide is the order Kronos engineers use.
The four questions, in order
- Which layer? Find the horizontal band — L0 at the bottom to L7 at the top — to know the role and latency class.
- Which color? The block's color gives its function — governance, infrastructure, operations, AI, reactor, feedback, or framing.
- Which line? The connection style gives the latency class — microsecond real-time, standard telemetry, or offline batch.
- Which termination? Follow the block to the named subsystem it touches — a magnet, a feedthrough, the divertor, the DEC train.
The checks the order enables
Reading in this order makes violations pop out. A pink block on the sub-10-microsecond path (a feedback function on the safety line) is wrong. A standard-telemetry line touching the command boundary is wrong. A yellow AI block wired straight to an orange actuator without passing through a purple/gray safety gate is wrong. The grammar is designed so that mistakes look like mistakes.
Reading both machines
The same reading order works for the breeder and burner blueprints. Because the lower layers are shared, only the L3-and-above blocks and the reactor terminations change: a spherical torus and shaping coils for Hyperion, an open mirror and plug coils for the burner. If a diagram reads differently below L3, that itself is a signal worth questioning.
The conventions are defined on the color grammar and the line semantics; the worked trace is from diagnostics to decision.