‹ how a pill says「yours」
The tool palette
Eight tools, eight accents — and two pairs a person cannot tell apart. Four ways out, each measured rather than asserted, each shown as swatches and as a real strip in both themes.
The finding, before the options: ~16 is the ceiling. Today's worst pair is ΔE 6.6（记事 and 计时器 — two purples a person cannot separate）. Careful placement reaches about 16, and every arrangement below lands there. Getting past 20 means leaving the muted family — I tried it, and the optimiser returned a primary blue for 投票 and a grass-green 记事 beside the sage board. You cannot get eight well-separated accents out of a deliberately quiet eight-hue palette — and you do not need to: every tool also has its own SVG glyph, so colour is the SECOND cue, never the identifier. The job was never to maximise. It was to kill the one pair that is genuinely indistinguishable.
The eight today
| tool | token | light | dark |
|---|
| 老虎机 slots | coral | #CC785C | #EFA58C |
| 掷骰 dice | rose | #C0708A | #E4A0B4 |
| 发牌 cards | gold | #A9802F | #D3AC6A |
| 密存 deposit | teal | #4C8AAB | #88B6D2 |
| 投票 poll | slate | #5F7186 | #96A5B7 |
| 白板 board | green | #5E8B6E | #92B79E |
| 记事 pad | lilac | #8579A8 | #B3A8D0 |
| 计时器 timer | plum | #8C6E96 | #BAA0C2 |
Since v649 the chip, the card, the watermark and the band all read the same accent, so changing one token moves every surface that tool owns — one edit, and the whole blast radius comes with it.
The two numbers each option is scored on. ① The closest pair, as ΔE in Lab. Two accents under about 15 read as one hue on a 24px glyph — a person cannot use a colour they cannot separate. ② The label's contrast on its own chip: the pill paints its text in the accent over a 13% wash of the same accent, so a hue that is too pale takes its own words down with it. Both are computed for light and dark, and each block below is scored on its worse theme.
how the new hues were chosenNot by eye. The shipped eight sit at hue angles 44 · 81 · 154 · 246 · 264 · 302 · 318 · 359 — which leaves two large empty stretches（154→246, no cyan at all; 81→154, no olive）and knots three of them together at the violet end. Every new colour below is placed in one of those gaps, at a chroma and lightness matching the existing set. Their dark variants are derived, not picked: the shipped eight follow one rule — same hue, lifted to L≈69, chroma ×0.81 — and the new ones are built by it, so they sit in the family rather than beside it.
The arrangements
Each block: the eight swatches, then the same strip in light and dark side by side — four obligations, the tools most likely to be owed at once.
0Today — what ships nowclosest pair ΔE 6.6 · 记事 ↔ 计时器
Two pairs are indistinguishable: 记事 and 计时器 are ΔE 6.6 apart（two purples）and 密存 sits on top of 投票（two blues）. And 老虎机 holds coral — the app's press-me colour, which is why a spin obligation still looks like a button.
老虎机#CC785C
掷骰#C0708A
发牌#A9802F
密存#4C8AAB
投票#5F7186
白板#5E8B6E
记事#8579A8
计时器#8C6E96
changes 0 of 8 · label on its own chip 2.5:1 light · 5.5:1 dark
AMinimum move — two tokensclosest pair ΔE 15.0 · 密存 ↔ 记事
记事 → aqua takes the pad out of the purple knot and into the quadrant the palette has never used（no cyan at all between green and teal）. 密存 → blue moves off 投票, and takes some of its separation from being DARKER rather than more saturated. Coral stays on 老虎机.
老虎机#CC785C
掷骰#C0708A
发牌#A9802F
密存#308CA5
投票#5F7186
白板#5E8B6E
记事#359A96
计时器#8C6E96
changes 2 of 8 — 密存 · 记事 · label on its own chip 2.5:1 light · 5.5:1 dark
BFree coral — 老虎机 goes clayclosest pair ΔE 15.0 · 密存 ↔ 记事
A, plus the change that answers the original complaint. Coral appears 317× in room-ui.html; while a tool owns it, that tool's pill impersonates the send button. Clay is coral's own hue, darker and duller — the family is intact, the CTA is not borrowed.
老虎机#A06159
掷骰#C0708A
发牌#A9802F
密存#308CA5
投票#5F7186
白板#5E8B6E
记事#359A96
计时器#8C6E96
changes 3 of 8 — 老虎机 · 密存 · 记事 · label on its own chip 2.6:1 light · 5.5:1 dark
CFree coral — 老虎机 goes oliveclosest pair ΔE 15.0 · 密存 ↔ 记事
The same, but the slots take the OTHER empty stretch（81→154, no olive）instead of staying in coral's family. The set spreads wider round the wheel; the cost is that 老虎机 no longer looks related to anything, which may be right for the loudest tool or may just look stray.
老虎机#7F8550
掷骰#C0708A
发牌#A9802F
密存#308CA5
投票#5F7186
白板#5E8B6E
记事#359A96
计时器#8C6E96
changes 3 of 8 — 老虎机 · 密存 · 记事 · label on its own chip 2.6:1 light · 5.5:1 dark
DThe ballot goes quiet insteadclosest pair ΔE 15.5 · 白板 ↔ 记事
The blue collision does not have to be fixed by moving 密存. 投票 is already the palette's quietest token（chroma 13.8, nearly grey）— pushing it the rest of the way to neutral separates it from teal without adding a second cool hue, and「the ballot is the grey one」is a perfectly good identity for the tool everybody uses. 密存 keeps its teal. Coral freed as in B.
老虎机#A06159
掷骰#C0708A
发牌#A9802F
密存#4C8AAB
投票#575F66
白板#5E8B6E
记事#359A96
计时器#8C6E96
changes 3 of 8 — 老虎机 · 投票 · 记事 · label on its own chip 2.6:1 light · 4.9:1 dark
What I would pick
my read
B — and the choice between B, C and D is yours, because they score the same.
All four kill the ΔE 6.6 pair and land at the ~16 ceiling, so the metric has stopped discriminating and only taste is left. What separates them:
A is the smallest possible change and leaves coral on 老虎机 — which means the spin pill still impersonates the send button. That was the original complaint, so A only half-answers it.
B fixes both problems and keeps the palette recognisably itself: clay is coral's own hue, one step darker and duller. If you want this settled with the least disruption to how the app looks, it is B.
C is B with 老虎机 in olive instead — a wider spread round the wheel, but the slots stop looking related to anything. Worth choosing if you think the loudest tool should stand apart.
D is the one worth arguing for against B. It fixes the blue pair by making 投票 quieter rather than by inventing a second cool hue — and since 投票 was already the palette's near-grey, that is less new colour, not more. It also gives the most-used tool the most neutral identity, which is defensible. Choose it if you think this palette's problem is that it has too many colours rather than the wrong ones.
What I would not do is chase a better number. Past ~16 the palette stops being this palette, and colour here is the second cue behind a distinct glyph — a die and a safe are not confusable objects even when their hues are close.