These are the three classical separation-of-powers functions read as color: who makes the rule, who executes under it, who judges against it. They are structural functions, invariant for an element — not states it passes through.

Three Functions renders the separation between rule-making, execution, and judgment as semantic role color — the classical separation of powers (Montesquieu) read onto a surface. "Three Functions" names the reusable vocabulary; "the Montesquieu spine" names its conceptual lineage. The lineage is what makes the mapping mean something — it is why legislative, executive, and judicial are the roles and why they are distinct — but the primitive is named for what it does, so it stays legible beside the literal Spectral State / Evidence State and portable to any surface that instantiates the same rule → execution → judgment separation.

The abstraction is domain-general but not role-agnostic. Its three roles are fixed. A future three-part model does not reuse these tokens merely because it also has three parts — Three Functions is the separation-of-powers triptych specifically, not a generic palette for arbitrary triads.

Only executive flips per theme; the two emphasis accents already read on both fields, so legislative and judicial are theme-invariant. Per the foundation's theme model, the dark executive value appears in both the explicit [data-theme="dark"] block and the prefers-color-scheme: dark auto block.

Color is a sparse semantic signal, not a set of opaque blocks. A consuming surface keeps the restrained ASK field and marks each role-bearing apparatus at one intensity:

role stroke       full role value
role fill         30%  ·  color-mix(in srgb, <role> 30%, transparent)
label             the role-identifying name set on a role-bearing apparatus: --fg-1, the standard
                  theme foreground, by default; a foreground registered in README.md
                  (High-contrast foreground — registered uses) only within that registration's
                  scope — never the role hue
notes · tags      explanatory notes, and flow, section or relationship tags — including a tag
                  that names a role from beside its apparatus — are not labels: they keep their
                  own neutral foreground roles, never the role hue
structural edges  neutral (frames, arrows, dimension lines stay --fg-* / --line-*)

Every role-bearing apparatus — a labeled box, a bounded field or chamber, a selected node — carries a 30% fill and the full role value as stroke. The field-vs-object distinction is carried by geometry and negative space, not opacity: a large field reads as a field because it is large and because the artifacts inside it are cut out of it — not because its wash is lighter. Labels stay on --fg-1, or on a registered foreground within its scope, so the role reads as a tint on structure, not as colored text. Color must remain redundant with the labels and geometry: the surface still communicates legislative / executive / judicial in monochrome.

Semantic function color attaches to the role-bearing apparatus, not automatically to the artifacts produced inside it. A function that produces things — an executive field emitting candidates — colors the field; the candidates it emits stay neutral content, rendered as negative cutouts (holes) through the field with neutral outlines, never a second role fill. The 30% fill is the rendering contract, not a palette addition — the three role colors are unchanged.

A consuming surface often contains consequential elements that are not functions — most commonly a downstream governance step that binds the accepted result. Represent these in the existing neutral structural treatment; they take no role color.

When a legend or key enumerates the three functions, a prominent neutral element (a governance box, an output node) can be left unexplained. If so, key it with one neutral exemplar under a separated, explicitly-labeled heading — a dotted legend-only divider, then a single neutral swatch (matching the scale and grammar of the three function swatches) under a label such as "downstream — not a fourth function." The key identifies the element's visual treatment; it does not reproduce the consuming surface's topology (no process chain, no arrows), and it is never a fourth colored swatch.

This creates no fourth role and no fourth color. There is no --function-governance. The separated row is explanatory: it teaches the reader that a consequential element sits outside the three functions — exactly the boundary the primitive holds.

Three semantic axes may appear on one surface; they may not compete for one visual channel on one element.

function role   ≠   element state   ≠   evidence state

Reused hue does not create semantic identity. --function-legislative and --state-proposed are both magenta; --function-judicial and --state-held are both named cyan. That is a shared hue name, not a shared token or resolved value — the function roles bind independently to the fixed emphasis accents, while --state-* are per-theme hsl() values, so they render differently (the magenta pair shares the 300° hue at different saturation/lightness; the two "cyans" are in fact different hues). These are not aliases: color proximity never turns different labels into the same meaning — the same discipline Evidence State applies to its exact reused values. Visible labels stay mandatory.

Channel contract when more than one system is present on an element:

function role   → fill / principal node treatment
state           → outline, badge, or separate state marker
evidence state  → evidence marker, rail, dash, or labeled annotation

In a document that adopts Review Semantics, review is a further axis, and the composition applies this contract with all three apart: state takes the separate state marker (a square), evidence the evidence marker (a dot), and review the outline. A diagram keeps the contract above.

• Tier 1 (identity-free): the three --function-* role names — a stable vocabulary other ASK-family surfaces can reuse.
• Tier 2 (ASK design language): the mappings to ASK palette values (magenta, the theme-neutral executive, cyan) and the per-theme executive resolution.
• No Tier 3. This primitive carries no instance identity.

1. Load colors_and_type.css first (Three Functions relies on its theme resolution and palette tokens), then three-functions.css.

2. On a consuming element, set the stroke from a single role token and a restrained translucent fill from the same value:

   /* example — consuming surface */
   .part[data-function="legislative"] {              /* discrete role object → 30% */
     stroke: var(--function-legislative);
     fill:   color-mix(in srgb, var(--function-legislative) 30%, transparent);
   }
   .field[data-function="executive"] {               /* a bounded field is a role-bearing apparatus → 30% */
     fill:   color-mix(in srgb, var(--function-executive) 30%, transparent);
   }

3. Keep labels at --fg-1 — or at a foreground registered for that exact bounded use in README.md (High-contrast foreground — registered uses), within that registration's scope — and keep structural edges neutral. A registration never makes a label take the role hue. Color only the parts that perform a function; leave everything else on the neutral field.

4. If the surface also carries state or evidence color, assign them to different channels (outline / marker / rail), never the same fill.

For the bounded-generativity model, Three Functions v0.2 applies the upstream admissibility rule as follows. The owner fixes which kinds of thing qualify for each function; each consumer owns which concrete element instantiates those kinds. method-ASK was the first to instantiate it. Landed state is recorded in CONSUMERS.md, not here.

• legislative → the source-of-intent / normative-apex role as constitutive source, and the grammar / brief box as delegated apparatus // the apex adopts or authorizes the governing standard; the grammar / brief carries it into operative scope, and its grant produces the aperture.
• executive → the bounded-realization chamber // the apparatus carries a 30% executive fill; generation fills the aperture, nonjudgmental. The candidate glyphs are variance the chamber produces — content, not executive-function objects — so they are rendered as negative cutouts through the wash with neutral outlines (consumer-local): the field reads as executive, the candidates read as uncommitted variance.
• judicial → the selection ring and the candidate it ratifies // evaluation, selection, closure. The ratified candidate is judicial's closed output, no longer neutral chamber variance — which is why it, alone among the glyphs, takes a role fill.

Everything else stays neutral, and those exclusions are load-bearing:

• an actor envelope, where the figure draws the occupying actor separately from the role // the actor is trans-functional, not exhausted by or reducible to the function of any role it occupies, so coloring its envelope with legislative magenta would collapse the actor into that function, while the source-of-intent role it occupies stays legislative;
• the aperture dimension and iris geometry // coloring a quantity would make it look like role-bearing apparatus;
• the outer bounded-generativity frame, the dotted authorized-judgment path, artifact governance, and the governed artifact with its governance record // carrying judicial cyan up into governance would imply selection = governance, and coloring the connecting arrows would suggest function propagates along the chain.

Artifact governance stays downstream and outside the three-function palette — it is not a fourth color. The classification rule applied above is upstream. Its concrete realization is consumer-local: the consuming figure owns its domain labels, element identity, additional neutral structural elements, geometry and layout — but may not redefine the upstream admissibility rule.

• Upstream (this repo): the three role names, their ASK mappings, the per-theme executive resolution, the rendering contract, the channel-coexistence rule, and the function-admissibility criteria — which kinds of thing qualify for each function, and which do not. General; family-reusable. Consumers inherit by reference and do not mint a divergent palette.
• Consumer-local (e.g. method-ASK, asset-pipeline-ASK): which concrete element instantiates a classified role, the domain vocabulary, additional neutral structural elements, geometry, and surface layout — all conforming to the upstream criteria. Those are the application, not the color system.

The limit runs one way. A consumer-local realization may specialize the upstream rule; it may not contradict or redefine it. Naming the element is the consumer's; deciding what may be named is not.