Field note · 2026-02-12
Labeling Wave Three Extensions Without Forcing the Count
How clinic participants decide when an extended third wave is justified, and when an alternate count is the honest choice.
In our Central clinics, the most common stuck moment is wave three. A strong advance looks like an extension, yet the labels refuse to sit cleanly against volume and Fibonacci relationships.
We ask annotators to mark the candidate third first, then test whether wave four retraces into wave one territory. If it does, the five-wave impulse thesis is already under pressure before any extension debate begins.
Extension labeling works best when the subwaves of three show clear internal impulsiveness. If those internals look corrective, we park the count as a leading diagonal candidate or an unfinished correction rather than inventing a stretched third.
Bring two competing sheets to the next clinic: one with the extended third, one with a truncated impulse ending earlier. Comparing both under instructor review is faster than polishing a single forced narrative.