Pills a component places

A brace pill works anywhere because you spell out everything about it. The pills on this page work the other way round: the component decides what they look like, and the position you write them in is what tells it to.

That makes them faster to write and easier to get wrong. There is no brace to look for, so a word in the wrong place is just a word in the wrong place. Each section below says where the slot is and what happens when you miss it.

Pill	You write	Works in
Status word	A word from a fixed list of ten, in a trailing code span	Six chart components
Metadata pill	Any short text, in a trailing code span	Components with a metadata slot
Date pill	A date, in a slot that expects one	`timeline-list`, `regulatory-update`, `roadmap`
Automatic pill	Nothing	`glossary`

Status words — the word is the color

Six chart components read a closed list of ten status words from a trailing inline-code span. You write at-risk and the component picks the color from the word itself. There is no modifier to remember, and unlike a color slot the meaning survives a change of theme.

Status words on a progress chart

Try this. Change at-risk to done and the pill turns to the positive color. Then try 'at risk' with a space: it still draws, in the informational color, and nothing warns you.

The ten words fall into five groups:

Write one of these	Reads as	Draws
`on-track` · `done` · `live`	Good	The theme’s positive color
`at-risk` · `warn`	Careful	The caution color
`blocked` · `fail`	Bad	The alarm color
`pilot` · `decision`	Noted, in flight	The informational color, also the fallback
`deferred`	Parked	A quiet gray

Color is not the only channel on the pills progress, timeline-list and kanban draw. In the print and accessibility palettes each group also carries its own symbol, so the reading survives grayscale and color blindness.

Where the status word goes

The slot is different in each component. This is a shared vocabulary, not a shared position:

Component	Where you write it	What it colors
`progress`	Second trailing span on the row: percent first, status second	A pill
`timeline-list`	Trailing span on the event’s first line, after the title	A pill
`kanban`	Trailing span on the card’s nested lane bullet	A pill, and the card
`gantt`	A token on a task bullet	The bar
`state-chart`	A span on the state’s line	The state’s tile
`slope`	Trailing span on the entity’s first line	The chart mark

progress, timeline-list and kanban draw an actual pill. gantt, state-chart and slope read the same ten words but color a bar, a tile or a chart mark instead.

One word means something different on gantt. It paints live in the informational color, not the positive one. On a schedule, live is work still running and done is work finished, and the two bars need to look different.

Two mistakes nothing catches

Hyphenate the word; capitals are fine. All six components ignore case, so AT-RISK, At-risk and at-risk all color the same way, and the pill keeps your spelling. Nothing else is corrected: at risk, with a space, is not in the list.

A word Lattice does not know still draws. In progress and timeline-list an unknown word falls back to the informational color, the same one pilot and decision use. A typo therefore looks like a deliberate verdict, and a reviewer reads it as one. Only gantt warns about an unknown word. On the other components, check each status word against the ten above before you ship.

What status words cannot reach

The ten words work only in those six components. There is no supported way to put a red status pill on, say, a cards-grid slide. To say yes, no or partly on any other slide, use a state mark: `[!]` draws the red cross anywhere inline code can go.

Metadata pills — a trailing code span

On components that have a metadata slot, a trailing inline-code span on a list row becomes a pill with no grammar at all:

- Throughput target met `on track`
- API latency `at risk`

The component chooses the look. Keep the text to one word (hyphenated is fine), or two at most: pills do not wrap, so a long phrase makes a very wide pill. Which components have the slot is listed on each one’s page in the component reference.

Date pills — a position, never a parsed date

A date pill is positional. Lattice never parses a date: it does not know that 2025 Q1 is one, it just styles whatever sits in the date slot. Write banana there and you get a pill reading “banana”.

Component	Where the date goes
`timeline-list`	The leading span, before the title: 1. `2025 Q1` Framework approved
`regulatory-update`	The last nested bullet, on its own
`roadmap`	The trailing span on a phase column header

timeline-list is the one to watch. Its date leads the line, where most components put metadata at the end. Write the date after the title and timeline-list treats it as a status word instead.

Automatic pills — you write nothing

A glossary slide adds a range pill to its heading by itself: the first letter of the first and last term. A list running from Consent to Processor reads C – P, and the pill follows the terms as you edit them.

When two pills meet on one row

A list-tabular row has two limits:

The spec variant finds its two code spans by position. A pill in the chip position works. A pill in the key position swaps the two: the plain chip lands in the key column and the pill moves to the end of the row.
Two trailing items on one row overlap: 1. Name `META` `{PILL}`. Two plain code spans do the same, so it is a grid limit, not a pill limit. Put one value in the trailing slot.

If a pill is not doing what you expect, the cheat sheet lists every slot on one page. For a deck written before the six state marks, read Upgrading an older deck.