Why Our Charts Are Accurate
Chart first, AI second
Ming Luo Pan is a one-way pipeline: birth data → deterministic chart engine → structured chart JSON → AI reading. The AI only translates the chart into language you can read — it never touches the calculation. That is the essential difference from "asking a chatbot to read your fortune". Give our engine the same birth data and it will always produce the same chart.
Three gates, every one verifiable
① True solar time
Zi Wei places the Life Palace by birth hour — one shichen off and the whole chart changes. We correct by birthplace longitude + NOAA equation of time: UTC+8 clock time → longitude correction (4 min per degree) → equation-of-time correction → then the shichen. A birth at 11:30 in Urumqi and one in Beijing are two different hours — this is exactly where many chart sites go wrong. A built-in longitude library covers hundreds of cities, and the result page labels the time before and after correction.
② Transparent conventions
The Zi Wei engine is open-source iztro-py (MIT); Qi Men uses our own hour-based rotating, chai-bu engine with Gan-Zhi calendar data from lunar-python's Shou Xing ephemeris (solar terms to the second). Si Hua supports both San-He and Fei-Xing conventions — the active one is stated on every chart and the two are never mixed. Leap months default to the same-month convention.
③ Cross-engine verification
We turned our 518,000-record chart dataset (independently generated) into a per-chart differ: for the same birth data, the two engines must produce identical Five-Elements Bureau, Life/Body palace branches, and major-star distribution. Our regression suite covers star permutations, Qi Men fu-yin hours, minute-level solar-term boundaries, and the late-zi edge case — all passing.
How the score works (plain language)
The big number on each chart grades the chart's structural features — not whether your fate is good. Think of it like a lab report's deviation-from-reference: deviation does not mean illness, and in this tradition "extreme" structures are often the exceptional ones. All scores start at 50, add/subtract by rule, and display compressed to 55–98 — every point is broken into line items below it.
Zi Wei · Structure score
Life-Palace stars (auspicious +5 / malefic −6) + three-squares weighting (Wealth·Career·Travel) + birth-year Si Hua placement (Lu/Ke add, Ji deducts by palace) + pattern hits (auspicious +4 / inauspicious −5) + Body Palace (±2). The Life Palace weighs most — it is the hub of the whole chart.
BaZi · Balance score
How far the Five-Element spread sits from the 20% equilibrium line + whether the Day Master's strength is moderate (balance prized most, +10) + Ten-Gods coverage + branch clashes (−6 each). The core aesthetic is "harmony" — extremes lose points.
Qi Men · Event score
It grades the question, not you — how smoothly this hour-chart treats the thing you asked about: duty-gate quality (Sheng/Kai +12, Shang/Si/Jing −12) + gate-crush / stem-punishment / void + duty star + day-stem palace situation + inauspicious-pattern density.
Synastry · Match score
Element complementarity, major-star interaction, Spouse Palace, and decade-sync combine into 1–5 stars mapped to a percentage (5★ → 96).
Boundaries: the weights are scholarly convention, not oracle — whether a Hua Ji costs 10 or 8 points follows mainstream San-He / Shi-Jia Qi Men usage, and another practitioner would weigh differently. That is why every line item is laid out: experts who disagree with the weights can read the details and ignore the total.
Boundaries of AI interpretation
The interpretation layer follows a forced pipeline: chart facts → pattern assessment → per-domain analysis → timing → action suggestions; earlier conclusions are locked and may not be rewritten. When a birth data matches our case archive, same-data readings serve as reference anchors to limit improvisation. We explicitly separate three things: facts on the chart / traditional interpretations / suggestions — facts are engine-guaranteed, interpretations belong to a school, suggestions are only reference.
Traditional divination is a cultural reference and self-exploration tool — not medical, legal, or investment advice. Judge major decisions rationally.