The Pipeline — Question In, Reading Out

A traditional Qimen consultation has four stages: fix the moment, cast the chart, find the question in the palaces, interpret. A master does them with an almanac, brush and thirty years of pattern memory. QimenIT does the same four stages in software — the first three deterministically, the last one with AI. Nothing in the pipeline is a black box, and this article walks through each stage.

1
Pin down the true moment 真太阳时
Your clock time and location become true solar time: longitude correction, equation of time, daylight-saving removal.
Deterministic · astronomy
2
Cast the chart 排盘
Solar term and date select one of the 18 ju; the four plates — earth, heaven, human, spirit — rotate into place.
Deterministic · classical rules
3
Locate your question 用神
Your question type maps to its governing symbols — career to the Open Door, money to the Life Door, you to your day stem — and the palaces holding them.
Deterministic · lookup
4
Interpret in plain language 断局
AI weighs tiers, seasonal strength and palace relationships against your specific wording, and writes the reading — with its reasoning shown.
AI · the only interpretive step
Four stages, one interpretive step. Steps 1–3 have exactly one correct answer each.

Step 1 — Pinning Down the True Moment

Everything downstream depends on the hour, and the hour depends on the sun, not the clock. QimenIT computes your true solar time from your location: four minutes of correction per degree of longitude, plus the equation of time for the date. Near a two-hour boundary — or the midnight day-change — this correction alone decides which chart you get. (The full story is in True Solar Time Explained.)

Step 2 — Casting the Chart

With the moment fixed, casting is pure rule-following. The solar term and day select one of the 18 classical ju — nine yang configurations for the waxing year, nine yin for the waning. The earth plate seeds the palaces; the nine stars, eight doors and eight deities then rotate along the Luoshu path into their positions for your hour. Two practitioners — or two computers — following the same school's rules will produce identical charts. This is arithmetic, and computers simply do not make arithmetic slips at 11:40 p.m.

Step 3 — Locating Your Question in the Chart

Classical practice assigns every question type a set of use-gods (用神) — the symbols that stand for the matter at hand. A job offer lives with the Open Door; a payment you're chasing lives with the Life Door; a partnership lives with Harmony (六合); you yourself live with the day stem. QimenIT reads your question, classifies it, and pulls the relevant palaces — the same triage a master performs by eye, encoded as a lookup rather than a judgment call.

Step 4 — Interpretation, With the Working Shown

Only now does AI enter. The model receives the computed chart, the located palaces, and your exact wording, and weighs the factors a human reader weighs: element tiers, seasonal strength, the relationships between your palace and the question's palace, and known symbol combinations. The output is a reading in plain language — with the chart attached, so every claim can be traced back to a palace you can point at.

Key Insight

The division of labor matters: AI never "decides" what chart you have — the chart is computed before the model sees anything. AI only does what humans also do with a finished chart: read it. If you took the same chart to a teacher, you could check every line.

Where AI Beats a Human Master — and Where It Doesn't

Where AI wins
Precision, patience, price
  • Exact solar time — computed astronomically, never estimated from a paper table
  • Zero casting errors — the mechanical steps are mechanical
  • No motivated reading — it doesn't soften bad news for a paying client, or pad sessions
  • Always available — 3 a.m. decisions get the same quality as 3 p.m. ones
  • Consistent school — one rule set, applied identically every time
Where a master wins
Context, dialogue, judgment
  • Reading you, not just the chart — hesitation, history, what you didn't say
  • The follow-up question — a live teacher probes until the real question surfaces
  • Lineage nuance — rare combinations passed down inside schools, thinly documented
  • Accountability — a person who remembers you and revisits the call
An honest scorecard. The two columns are complements, not rivals.

The practical conclusion: AI is the strongest first reader Qimen has ever had — flawless mechanics, instant availability, and no incentive to tell you what you want to hear. For most everyday decisions, that is the whole job. For the biggest calls of a life, a chart in hand makes a conversation with a human teacher better, not redundant — you arrive with the mechanics already done.

Try It Now

See the pipeline run on your own question. Your first reading is free — and the chart, the located palaces, and the solar-time correction are all shown with it.