Thread Colors That Survive a Design Review Without Melting

Color systems fall apart when every engineer picks a new highlighter shade the night before a review. We propose a restrained palette tied to ownership, not mood.

The middle section walks through a Gangnam team’s before-and-after photos—names anonymized—where three colors replaced twelve. Mentors reported shorter debates because everyone could point to a lane without deciphering handwriting.

We also admit where this fails: if your toolchain exports traces without metadata, colors cannot save you. You still need schema discipline upstream.

Closing guidance covers how to export the same palette into PDFs so remote participants are not second-class citizens.