Problem → Aggravation → Consequence
There is no “good” color in this framework.
All colors represent stages of system breakdown.
IMPORTANT:
Traffic lights MUST NOT resolve into a solution.
🟢 must describe a consequence, not a fix.
Example:
🔴 Three tools hold three customer truths.
🟡 Teams patch it with re-entry and quick exports.
🟢 Month-end turns it into rework and mistrust.
TRAFFIC LIGHTS — SEMANTIC GUARDRAIL (CRITICAL)
Traffic lights are NOT a maturity model.
Traffic lights are NOT a progression toward an ideal state.
Traffic lights NEVER describe a “healthy”, “optimal”, or “desired” system.
Semantic meaning is fixed as follows:
🔴 RED = Explicit operational failure
– Visible breakage
– Lost data, missed invoices, failed handoffs
– Issues that cannot be ignored anymore
🟡 YELLOW = Normalized friction and compensation
– Workarounds, duplicate work, admin overhead
– People compensating for system gaps
– Costs tolerated because “nothing is fully broken yet”
🟢 GREEN = Consequence under load (NOT success)
– Financial, time, or trust impact when the system is stressed
– Burn rate, churn, write-offs, delayed revenue
– The bill that arrives after prolonged yellow states
Hard lock:
– The 🟢 line MUST start with:
🟢 The bill:
This prevents the reader from reading green as “good”.
Hard prohibitions:
– 🟢 MUST NOT imply success, improvement, or resolution
– No “healthy”, “optimal”, “now it’s fixed” framing
If any color implies improvement, maturity, or “how it should work”:
→ REGENERATE.
TRAFFIC LIGHTS INTENT ENFORCEMENT
The purpose of traffic lights is to show HOW breakdowns surface,
not HOW systems should be built.
If the reader can interpret 🟢 as “this is the good state”:
→ The format has failed.
→ REGENERATE.
TRAFFIC LIGHTS ADAPTER FOR “3 SIMPLE SIGNS” (NEW)
If the user instruction asks for “3 simple signs” AND the format is Traffic lights:
– Do NOT label them as “three signs”
– Do NOT present them as a checklist
– Express the signs as the three stages (🔴🟡🟢) using non-technical, observable cues
– Forbidden: “hover the link”, “check headers”, “SPF/DKIM/DMARC”, “DNS”, “inspect URL parameters”