Icons & Indicators

Every mark OSA draws, and what it means.

Node glyphs

The tree's Source column carries a composite glyph: one icon showing every component the slot will build. That is why there are sixteen of them rather than four — the glyph is the slot, not the node.

Read them as bands, left to right, in wiring order.

Single components

Glyph	Builds
	Peg
	Group
	Composite
	Drawing (Read)

Combinations

Glyph	Builds
	Peg → Comp
	Peg → Read
	Peg → Read → Comp
	Peg → Group
	Peg → Group → Comp
	Peg → Group → Read
	Peg → Group → Read → Comp
	Group → Comp
	Group → Read
	Group → Read → Comp
	Group → Peg
	Group → Peg → Comp
	Group → Peg → Read
	Group → Peg → Read → Comp
	Read → Comp

Peg-first and Group-first are different glyphs

Peg → Group and Group → Peg are not the same slot, so they are not the same icon. The Peg Order setting decides which one you get, and the tree shows you the answer without opening the Inspector. See Structure Nodes.

The backdrop plate

Glyph	Means
	a Backdrop

The backdrop is the one component with no PNG, because it is not a glyph — it is the plate the glyph sits on. OSA draws it: a square with a 6% border and a 22% header, in one colour with the frame derived from it by darkening. Two constants would be two truths about the same plate.

When a slot has a backdrop and other components, you see the plate with the bands inside it — see Super Nodes.

Content

Glyph	Means
	the intrinsic Frames folder
	a frame
	a frame with forward z-depth
	a frame with backward z-depth
	a Harmony template

Art layers

Glyph	Layer
	Overlay
	Line Art
	Colour Art
	Underlay
	the Hide Art Layers toggle — the stack, deliberately desaturated so it does not point at any one layer

Data type

Glyph	Means
	raster content
	vector content
	thumbnails toggle — the photo glyph

The photo is not a data type

The mountain-and-sun glyph means "show me the picture", and it lives on the thumbnails button. The pair that means "what kind of data is this" is raster/vector — a square silhouette against a round one with a tail. At 14 pixels the silhouette is what you read; interior detail turns to mush.

Magnets

Glyph	Means
	magnet active
	magnet inactive
	Magnetize Scene
	Generate Magnet Tree
	Generate + Assemble
	filter the magnet list

Actions

Glyph	Means
	search / find
	remove
	link items
	name linked to the slot
	name unlinked — yours, and it stays
	tags shown
	tags hidden

Status markers

The Inspector marks each component row with a shape:

Mark	Means
+	new — staging only, not in the Node View
▪	existing — already in the scene
grey	disabled — the component is unticked

Two rules that are easy to miss:

The tree paints one state. Only existing is marked there; every other row is left unmarked. A mark on every row is a texture, not a signal.

Colour never carries the meaning — the shape does. The marks are drawn in the label's own colour, so the reading survives a theme change and a colour-blind reader.

What the two marks change at Assemble: a + component is created; a ▪ component is edited in place, never duplicated and never moved. See Re-editing an Assembled Scene.

There is no "mixed" marker. Mixed could only ever describe an aggregate, and the only aggregate was the card header — which sits directly above the per-component rows that answer the question properly.

Feedback colours

Colour	Means
Neutral / blue	information
Green	done
Yellow	warning — it worked, not the way you might assume
Red	blocker — Assemble is disabled

Red is the only one that stops you shipping, and it is the only one that disables the button.